Daylight Saving Time Affect Our Health, Experts Say

A new bill has been introduced in the US senate regarding making daylight saving permanent in the US. Currently, daylight savings happen during the spring in the US, Europe, and most parts of Canada when the clock is set forward by an hour, and by autumn it’s set one hour backward again.

This has been an ongoing tradition in the US and now there is a bill being introduced by Senator Marco Rubio to end the practice of changing clock timings and making daylight savings permanent throughout the nation. Florida had already voted in 2018 to make daylight savings permanent but it has to be passed as a federal law to come into effect.

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Once the bill is passed through the US house of representatives and signed by the president then it becomes an official law. Everyone in the US will move their clocks one hour ahead permanently. 

But an increasing number of sleep experts believe that this move can affect our health. According to studies done over 25 years, daylight savings can hurt the natural body rhythm tuned to the earth’s rotation. This points to the long-standing debate of whether daylight savings is an important factor at all and if it needs to be implemented. Dr.Elizabeth Klerman, professor of neurology in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School says that she is one among the experts who sees this as a bad idea.

She says that our body clock or circadian rhythm is based upon the natural light and not the clock that is on our walls. So far there is no proof also that the body would adjust itself to a new standard of time. Dr.Phyllis Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Evanston, Illinois is also against the idea of implementing daylight savings. She said that a lot of our bodily functions are managed by the circadian rhythm like the heartbeat, cortisol levels, blood pressure, sleep timings, eating timings, etc.

All these can go off track when we readjust the time according to daylight savings methods. The clock timings in autumn before daylight savings is the one that is closer to the natural light timings of the earth’s rotation. 

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has called for a ban on daylight savings stating that current research backs the implementation of the year-round standard time system as it is best suited for human circadian rhythm and provides benefits for public health. When daylight savings are pushed even by an hour, our bodies develop a condition that the experts call “social jet lag”.

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This can lead to the development of negative health issues like heart issues, diabetes, depression, digestive issues, and other metabolic disorders. A 2003 study showed that when we reduce the average 7-8 hour sleep cycle by 90 minutes then it can alter the nature of the immune cells and can create inflammation in the body that leads to chronic diseases.

So according to the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, making daylight savings permanent shifts the working hours earlier by an hour for an extra 5 months every year and also considering the fact that in winter, the body clock is usually slower than when compared to summer.

So this combination of daylight saving and winter would create a clear-cut impact on our health. This is not the first time that the US has tried to make daylight saving permanent but even historically too, these efforts were met with dire consequences. Klerman observed that even countries like the UK, Russia, and India also tried implementing it but then went back to the standard time.  

Reference:  

🔵 Webmd.com(2005-2022).How Time Changes Affect Your Sleep. available(online)at.https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/coping-with-time-changes