Daylight Saving Time Linked To Heart Attacks

jones_supa (887896) writes "Switching over to daylight saving time, and hence losing one hour of sleep, raised the risk of having a heart attack the following Monday by 25 percent, compared to other Mondays during the year, according to a new U.S. study released on Saturday. By contrast, heart attack risk fell 21 percent later in the year, on the Tuesday after the clock was returned to standard time, and people got the extra hour of sleep. The not-so-subtle impact of moving the clock forward and backward was seen in a comparison of hospital admissions from a database of non-federal Michigan hospitals. It examined admissions before the start of daylight saving time and the Monday immediately after, for four consecutive years. Researchers cited limitations to the study, noting it was restricted to one state and heart attacks that required artery-opening procedures, such as stents."

Comments

Sleep -1?

[eneville]

Go to bed an hour earlier then?

Re:Sleep -1?

[ArcadeMan]

Our biological clocks don't care about our artificial, human-made clocks.

Re:Sleep -1?

[MillionthMonkey]

Until they go beep-beep-beep at 6 AM.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Anonymous Coward]

My cat is not an artificial, human, made clock, you insensitive clod.

Re:Sleep -1?

[hey!]

Why not go to bed at the same solar time and wake up at the same solar time? This involves waking up earlier than you need to on work days during standard time. But so what? During daylight savings time, spend an hour in the morning in a cafe drinking coffee and reading a novel.

Years ago that would mark you as a weirdo because you couldn't stay up and watch some hot TV show that starts at 10PM, but people aren't slaves to the broadcast TV schedule any longer, so why not do things on your own schedule?

I'm by nature a night owl, but staying up is no big deal for me. Getting up early is a lot more rewarding; everything you like about being up abnormally late is true of being up abnormally early.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an even better solution: stop making people wake up an hour earlier because they have to get to their jobs that suddenly begin an hour earlier for no particular reason.

The only plausible reason for having DST in the modern world is so that people can get up with the dawn to go to their jobs. But with it beginning so early in the year, on the first day of DST most people have to get up before the dawn, which is just awful. I don't have any hard evidence to back up this idea, but I bet if you moved the DST start date to the end of April (and the end date to the end of August) there would be a lot fewer heart attacks and a lot less complaining.

Re:Sleep -1?

[AK Marc]

UTC is not on the human clock either. The human clock isn't 24 hours, but instead, uses the sun as a cue for constant and daily resets. So any 24 our clock is wrong.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Immerman]

For one it doesn't work if you're on corporate time. I spent a couple years in a windowless office, and let me tell you winters sucked - I only worked 8-5, but for a couple months near the solstice dawn was just breaking when I left for work, and the sun was setting about the time I left for home. Lunchtime was the only sun I got to see, and that's at at 35.6N latitude, most of the nation is further north and has it even worse.

These days I am in fact operating mostly on solar time, but daylight savings still meant that 8am went from being an hour or so after sunrise, to having it still hanging on the horizon with only the lit sky providing light. If you presume you need a 30-60 minutes for your morning rituals and getting to work, that means for a few weeks after DST you need to be waking up while it's still dark out, and after you were finally getting to see some sun in the morning too.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Anonymous Coward]

For one it doesn't work if you're on corporate time. I spent a couple years in a windowless office, and let me tell you winters sucked - I only worked 8-5, but for a couple months near the solstice dawn was just breaking when I left for work, and the sun was setting about the time I left for home. Lunchtime was the only sun I got to see, and that's at at 35.6N latitude, most of the nation is further north and has it even worse.

I'm at approx 56N, I awake at 4:00am UTC (+/- 1 minute) every frigging morning as I have done so for a couple of decades now irrespective of whatever the clocks say (only time I don't is when I'm Ill). An asides, there's a wonderful paradox at work here, I get to wake up the cats rather than the usual order of things...

I head to work at 6:30am, leave work at any time between 17:30-18:30, current sunrise/sunset times are 07:11/17:53 here, so occasionally I get to see some spectacular sunrises (weather permitting..) I have some filtered natural light, maybe get to spend part of the day in a room with windows, but have gone for weeks during the winter months where the only time I've seen the Sun is at weekends.

It'll be next month before I start getting some sunlight in the morning before I leave for work, but thanks to the start of BST I'll get to see some nice sunsets over the next couple of weeks..

Re:Sleep -1?

[Charliemopps]

You don't have kids.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Windwraith]

Tell me how. No matter how hard I try or how long I stay in bed, I am totally unable to sleep until 15-16 hours have elapsed after waking up. And if I manage to fall asleep, I'll be wide awake but tired as hell after 2-3 hours tops.

Sleep is not the same for every person. It varies wildly from individual to individual. That's why people always shuns sleep disorders as some form of misconduct instead of a legitimate problem (until they gain a sleep disorder themselves, if that happens they'll suddenly understand).

Re:Sleep -1?

[Opportunist]

The uncontrollable urge to kick idiots in the nuts. But I usually find out they have no balls before I start to swing.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hej hallå där, Anonymous Bonehead!

I cordially invite you to come and live in the wonderful Kingdom of Sweden for a few years and see just what it's like what to bob back and forth between 18-hour days in summer and 6-hour days in winter.

*Especially* if your natural clock is already a bit off from the 24-hour norm, like Opportunist's--and mine.

Then we'll talk. :^)

Re:Sleep -1?

[Rakarra]

The only plausible reason for having DST in the modern world is so that people can get up with the dawn to go to their jobs. But with it beginning so early in the year, on the first day of DST most people have to get up before the dawn, which is just awful. I don't have any hard evidence to back up this idea, but I bet if you moved the DST start date to the end of April (and the end date to the end of August) there would be a lot fewer heart attacks and a lot less complaining.

Better yet -- DST all the time. No time switches. Standard time sucks.

Re:Sleep -1?

[Quirkz]

I've heard it, too. There are references in literature to "the second sleep" which faded away in recent centuries. That second sleep being after people had their first sleep, then spent some time awake in the dark doing whatever, and then went back to bed to finish off the night.

A simpler cure

[petes_PoV]

Surely this isn't linked to the time people go to bed and rise, but the amount of sleep they get.

So to reduce the risk of a heart attack, just get more sleep.

Re:A simpler cure

[Zontar The Mindless]

I think it's heaps simpler not to fuck with the clocks, and to let people make their own decisions about bedtimes.

Re:A simpler cure

[lgw]

Surely this isn't linked to the time people go to bed and rise, but the amount of sleep they get.
So to reduce the risk of a heart attack, just get more sleep

The is how "morning people" have been misunderstanding "night owls" for centuries. Here's why you're wrong: I cannot go to sleep on demand. I can wake up on demand, thanks to my alarm clock, I can stay up later than my body wants me to, but I cannot make my body go to sleep any earlier than it wants to (without addictive drugs).

So, yes, if you fuck with the clocks like an inconsiderate fucking fucker, I'll lose an hour of sleep. Nothing I can do about it. And since it takes me a few days to adjust to getting up 1 hour earlier (the norm is only 1 day per hour), I miss an hour's sleep for a few days after the clock change.

Re:A simpler cure

[LordLimecat]

The amount of daylight your body gets ALSO affects your biological health and circadian rhythm.

Re:A simpler cure

[FireFury03]

I think it's heaps simpler not to fuck with the clocks, and to let people make their own decisions about bedtimes.

The problem with "let people make their own decisions" is that it's rarely your own decision. I work 9:00 - 17:30, not because those are the hours I want to work, but because they are the hours that most people work and my customers expect me to be contactable during "normal office hours".

Re:A simpler cure

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, yes, if you fuck with the clocks like an inconsiderate fucking fucker, I'll lose an hour of sleep.

Yes, but what you fail to understand is that people have to go to work, and the times of day and night shift over the year. It's not like businesses could just adopt "winter hours" and "summer hours" - everybody must upset their entire day to accommodate it.

Well, except for Home Depot, Walmart, all the parks, and all those businesses that do have different summer hours. But nobody else could possibly do that - it would be pure anarchy. I mean, children wouldn't even get to go to sleep while it's till light out in June if we did something crazy like keep the clocks the same all year!

Dozens of lives lost to heart attacks (and the few billion in admin time) is a small price to pay for the soothing hand of Congress regulating our clocks twice a year.

Re:A simpler cure

[fremsley471]

Yes please, I will have it with milk before I lay my head down for unclouded dreams of delight.

95% of all food/environment-related health research misses the elephant in the room; the hard to quantify effects of personal stress. This study shows that stress, by variation to routine, kills people. My remarks were there to illustrate that sleep cycles driven by routine are unnatural because we make them so.

It's always galling when the media focus on rich, busy people, on how stressful their lives are, It's the poor bastards at the bottom who are most stressed and have the worst health outcomes. Any research that draws attention to this is to be welcomed.

Re:A simpler cure

[FuzzNugget]

"morning people"

You misspelled "minions of Satan"

Re:A simpler cure

[BitZtream]

That's because people punt the problem to Monday rather than adjusting over the time provided.

The time change occurs on Sunday morning at 2am ... so thats one wake up between when the change happens and Monday. If you start prepping before the time change you still only get ... 2 wake ups to 'adjust'

Its rather stupid to pretend that one or 2 days is a great difference in the process.

Pretending that people actually have enough time to do so is dishonest at best.

Re:A simpler cure

[sjames]

So wake up a bit earlier on Saturday morning too. You could even start the week before if it's that much problem for you so you have a head start on the weekend.

If your personal schedule is so busting at the seams that you can't manage that, you have larger problems that will probably lead to an early death anyway.

Circadian Rhythm

[X!0mbarg]

If this is what happens once a year, imagine what happens to people who have their schedules changed at random (like a truck driver), or someone on "swing shifts"!

Little wonder there are so many truckers having heart attacks that end their careers (or even their lives)!

And to think I worked for a company that the VP actually said to me (with a witness from their own Drivers' Advisory Board present, no less):

"Circadian rhythm is a luxury we cannot afford in this industry."

I'd name names, but I might want to return to driving one day, and it could get me Blackballed ;)

Re:Circadian Rhythm

[ShanghaiBill]

Little wonder there are so many truckers having heart attacks that end their careers (or even their lives)!

It could also be because they sit on their butts all day and eat lots of junk food.

Re:Circadian Rhythm

[sjames]

Yes. If we're going to ban DST, there's a lot of other things that will have to go. Like moving work shifts. The courts will have to adjust as well. No more jury duty for night owls unless they open a night court.

Re:Circadian Rhythm

[thegarbz]

Not sure what it's like where you live, but the trucking industry in Australia is ruled by unachievable deadlines, low salaries, and life critical bonus payments made for early delivery.

The truckers down here died disproportionately from heart attacks not due to their sleep cycle but due to an incredible reliance on stimulating hard drugs, usually speed and ice causing a lack of sleep altogether.

Enough of the stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, the only reason for this stupid clock change thing is because they don't want children waiting for buses in morning darkness.

In other news, from what I remember hearing, youth crimes are largely committed between 3PM and 5PM. They get home from school, parents are still at work, and they get into trouble.

Fix both problems: Stop changing clocks; let kids go to school 1-2 hours later and get home later.

Re:Enough of the stupidity

[Primate Pete]

Since World War II, it has been mostly about saving energy. In the US, FDR made it mandatory under the name "War Time." Early uses go back to World War I, before school buses were in common use. It's not about children or crime.

Re:Enough of the stupidity

[zippthorne]

The only problem is that there is no evidence that any energy is saved. The only studies I have seen reported have been either inconclusive or show a slight increase in energy usage.

sunlight is evil

[confused one]

Proof that sunlight is Evil! Return to your basements and bunkers fellow geeks. Avoid any light not produced by our shining monitors, as it is a lie. Hazard the light from the Sun and you will be burned! What other proof do you need? Only in our computer generated worlds do we find Truth.

Strangely, it all works out

[Overzeetop]

125% x 81% = 100% (to two significant figures, which is as close as we can get from the article data).

OTOH, it would be interesting to see if you could gain a long term benefit by letting people sleep in an extra hour on a regular basis.

Re:Must prove

[interkin3tic]

I would think an even dispersal of heart attacks would be preferable to spiking them on one day due to hospital resources. Plus, causing heart attacks to happen sooner than they would have is also bad. If it happens six months earlier than it would have otherwise, that's six months a patient might have been able to mitigate those risk factors.

With so many people running off smartphones and computers rather than watches, I feel like we could probably soon manage to move away from a on/off switch. Have dawn in each time zone be, say, 7 AM each day, have the time adjusted between 3 and 4 AM each night, it would be, what, a few minutes difference each night at most?

I doubt we ever WOULD move to something like that. It might be amusing to see Obama propose that just to see what republicans would say about it. And aside from heart attacks, I don't really see much reason for it aside from I like more light in the evenings. But I think we definitely could do it.

Re:So...?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not overall economic activity, consumer activity. People go shopping more because daylight is longer. That much is proven, and retailers love DST because of it. Not sure about the overall economic effect. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a net zero.

Going to die anyway

[WaffleMonster]

I'll let TFA speak for itself...

"The overall number of heart attacks for the full week after daylight saving time didn't change, just the number on that first Monday. The number then dropped off the other days of the week."

Michigan

[fustakrakich]

It sits on the "trailing edge" of its time zone. The clocks are out of kilter with the sun, by almost two hours during DST. Time zone borders should be moved to the white areas between the red and green of this graphic and then kill DST. Solar noon should never happen before the clock strikes 12.

Re:Michigan

[David_Hart]

It sits on the "trailing edge" of its time zone. The clocks are out of kilter with the sun, by almost two hours during DST. Time zone borders should be moved to the white areas between the red and green of this graphic and then kill DST. Solar noon should never happen before the clock strikes 12.

Boston is on the leading edge of it's time zone. I always look forward to DST. If we didn't change the time the sun would come up at 4:30 am here and go down at 7:30 pm during the summer. I'm a night owl and the sun coming up that early would kill me plus it wouldn't leave much time for summer evening activities during week nights. Boston really should be on the Atlantic time zone, but that wouldn't go over well with business because of ties to the NY stock markets, etc.

Re:Absolute Percentages?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it's the first one--25% of the population dies of a heart attack on the same day each spring, and nobody noticed until now.

Interesting but nowhere near enough data

[jockm]

So we could see if they compared to Arizona — which mostly doesn't follow DST. For for that matter to dairy farmers who also don't follow DST in their sleep schedule. From TFA it seems like the data only comes from the state of Michigan in what I believe is one year only.

This study is interesting but there is no where near enough data to draw any real conclusions... not that that will stop anyone...

Re:Interesting but nowhere near enough data

[thegarbz]

Given how this is a quite commonly cited theory I'm willing to bet there are more studies on heart attacks than just this one in Michigan. Google Scholar brought up heaps of studies:

2011: "Overall, we found an elevated incidence ratio of 1.039 (95% confidence interval, 1.003–1.075) for the first week after the spring clock shift forward"

2008: "The incidence of acute myocardial infarction was significantly increased for the first 3 weekdays after the transition to daylight saving time in the spring. The incidence ratio for the first week after the spring shift, calculated as the incidence for all 7 days divided by the mean of the weekly incidences 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after, was 1.051 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.032 to 1.071). In contrast, after the transition out of daylight saving time in the autumn, only the first weekday was affected significantly (Figure 1B); the incidence ratio for the whole week was 0.985 (95% CI, 0.969 to 1.002)."

Re:Interesting but nowhere near enough data

[thegarbz]

Right so people should only do meta studies? Then who would do actual studies? We can't all just believe that Big Data will get us everywhere. This is another study. The comments on slashdot are perfectly justified given that this study shows results which are in line from other similar studies performed else where at different times.

Just because we're commenting on one study doesn't suddenly invalidate everything.

Re:Why?

[mjwx]

I haven't heard a cogent explanation of Daylight Savings Time, ever.

It's some stupid thing that we do just because we do it.

Well, here in Western Australia the sun is shining at 4:30 in the morning in the summer. This means all the birds, dogs and retarded morning people up and waking the dead at 4-fucking-30. The Sun goes down around 7:30 PM.

We had daylight savings for 3 glorious years until the backwards idiots in this state repealed it. DST shifted the sunrise to 5:30 and sunset to 8:30... this had the added bonus of allowing you to do things that required daylight after work.

So there are two cogent explanations of why DST exists:
1. Sleep in the morning.
2. Can go to the beach after work.
You have been educated.