It's Time

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"The first true proponent of Daylight Saving Time was an Englishman named William Willet. A London builder, he conceived the idea while riding his horse early one morning in 1907. He noticed that the shutters of houses were tightly closed even though the Sun had risen. In “The Waste of Daylight,” the manifesto of his personal light-saving campaign, Willet wrote, “Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter; and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the nearly clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used… . That so many as 210 hours of daylight are, to all intents and purposes, wasted every year is a defect in our civilization. Let England recognise and remedy it.”

Old Farmer's Almanac

"There is an international consensus right now that daylight savings time should be abolished because this practice really causes mental and physical health risks, and we see that at the population level."

Rebecca Robillard, co-chair Canada Sleep Research Consortium, head scientist clinical sleep research, The Royal

 

"I haven't seen any health-related research that favours daylight time."

"[Remaining on daylight time, which pushes more daylight hours to the end of the day, would create a kind of] social jet lag that induces permanent sleep deprivation [that would make winters especially difficult]."

Dr. Joseph De Koninck, sleep researcher, professor emeritus, psychology department, University of Ottawa 

People dread it, people hate it, people deplore the changing of clocks in fall and spring. It's an upsetting interference in the normal cadence of life, both biologically and socially.The loathing is not merely superficial, the nuisance of changing household clocks to reflect either 'spring forward and fall back' Beyond its undeniable nuisance factor, it is hazardous to human health. The hazards to human patience is a mere byproduct.

And look here, science agrees. The argument has been made by researchers that daylight time and the clock changes associated with the practise cause serious harm to peoples' health, according to sleep researchers and supported by science. Studies highlight a spike in heart attacks, strokes and traffic accidents occurring the day following the forward move of clocks. Not to mention proven long-term mental and physical risks to health.

It is past time to put an end to daylight time which this year begins on Sunday, 12th of March. The word is in; clocks are to be set forward by an hour, a ritual that leads to the first Sunday of November when clocks are then set back an hour. Lose an  hour, gain an hour; fall to spring. Spring clock changes are dreaded in particular for the sense of jet lag it produces.

A new Canadian sleep research consortium, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research has joined ranks with many scientists calling for an end to daylight time. Numerous international studies found a spike in rates of stroke by nine percent. Heart attack rates rise between 24 to 50 percent on the Monday morning following the springtime change. Increases in traffic crashes have also been documented through research.

Depression and longer-term health issues,. inclusive of cancer are also attributed to the effects of spring and fall time changes. Damage results both by lack of sleep -- particularly in the spring -- but as well through disruption of the biological clocks resulting from the time shift, which has been linked to an increased cancer risk.

Sleep researchers are united in calling for a return to standard time, closer to people's natural biological rhythms and maximizing sunlight hours when people's health is benefited the most. 

 

"Most of Canada is on Daylight Saving Time; only portions of Saskatchewan and small pockets of British Columbia remain on Standard Time year-round. However, the practice has its detractors. In the words of a current-day Canadian poultry producer, “The chickens do not adapt to the changed clock until several weeks have gone by, so the first week of April and the last week of October are very frustrating for us.” Similarly, one Canadian researcher likened an increase in traffic accidents to the onset of Daylight Saving Time. Other experts insist that the extra hour of daylight reduces crime."

Old Farmer's Almanac

Measurable health effects associated with the daylight saving time shift

The transition to daylight saving time (DST) is beneficial for energy conservation but at the same time it has been reported to increase the risk of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular problems. Here, we evaluate the effect of the DST shift on a whole spectrum of diseases—an analysis we hope will be helpful in weighing the risks and benefits of DST shifts. Our study relied on a population-based, cross-sectional analysis of the IBM Watson Health MarketScan insurance claim dataset, which incorporates over 150 million unique patients in the US, and the Swedish national inpatient register, which incorporates more than nine million unique Swedes. For hundreds of sex- and age-specific diseases, we assessed effects of the DST shifts forward and backward by one hour in spring and autumn by comparing the observed and expected diagnosis rates after DST shift exposure. We found four prominent, elevated risk clusters, including cardiovascular diseases (such as heart attacks), injuries, mental and behavioral disorders, and immune-related diseases such as noninfective enteritis and colitis to be significantly associated with DST shifts in the United States and Sweden. While the majority of disease risk elevations are modest (a few percent), a considerable number of diseases exhibit an approximately ten percent relative risk increase. We estimate that each spring DST shift is associated with negative health effects–with 150,000 incidences in the US, and 880,000 globally. We also identify for the first time a collection of diseases with relative risks that appear to decrease immediately after the spring DST shift, enriched with infections and immune system-related maladies. These diseases’ decreasing relative risks might be driven by the documented boosting effect of a short-term stress (such as that experienced around the spring DST shift) on the immune system. 

National Library of Medicine, 

National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S.

 

 

 

Losing Daylight, Gaining SAD

Academic research shows that losing an hour of daylight can be linked to negative effects on both the mind and body, including disturbed sleep patterns, seasonal depression and obesity. (iStock)

"When we admitted the first cohort, it was in the summer-time, and they were really quite well."

"Some skeptical people said, 'Well, what will happen if they don't get depressed? You'll look pretty stupid. And I thought, well, that's OK, I'll take that chance. It's not such a bad thing to look stupid."

"[And then, on schedule the majority of the test subjects became depressed; people went] down [at different times reflecting their sensitivity to lack of light']. We  exposed them to light and it was really quite one of the most exciting things. ... It was, in some cases, very transformational."

"If you've got SAD [seasonal affective disorder] and COVID anxiety, it's just a double whammy."
"If people aren't operating at their best, they should be treated or they should be helped."

"It's an unfortunate term, because it's got a kind of Freudian feel about it -- 'Oh these people are neurotic, they're just complaining about nothing'."

Dr.Norman Rosenthal, professor of psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine

"We don't know what the trigger is, and it may be different for different people."

"What makes this unique is that there are very few sub-types of depression that we know when they're going to come on [most frequently between November and December] and when they're going to get better."

"Certain hormone levels, certain basic building blocks of proteins -- these all shift with the seasons."

Dr.Anthony Levitt, psychiatrist, chief, Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto

Seasonal Affective Disorder   HelpGuide

 

Dr.Rosenthal, back in the winter of 1981 began a study ti determine the extent of a depression that would affect peoples' moods in the late fall months, when those affected tended to go to sleep earlier, sleep for longer periods and awaken later. By late afternoon their energy levels failed, they felt unmotivated, lethargic and depressed. People who travelled south reported mood improvement days after their arrival "and a deterioration in mood a few days after returning North again".

He was a pioneer in the study of a syndrome newly named as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). He worked out of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda then and had his work cut out persuading colleagues of the legitimacy of the phenomenon. "Some made a joke out of it", he recalled. Forty years later, there are still skeptics, but the reality is that when clocks are turned back by an hour at 2 a.m. on November 7 with the end of daylight saving time, society in general reacts unhappily.

An event shown to correlate with seasonal depression onset.  Now, with COVID still bedeviling the globe, the situation has become more acute for many people. In the official psychiatry catalogue of mental illness SAD is recognized as a major depressive disorder, with its "seasonal pattern", as a sub-type of major depression. It has long been associated with a lack of environmental light; once people were submitted to supplemental light, their symptoms eased; "the more light, the better".

Unknown is what it is that causes the shift of critical biological molecules; length of day? amount of light exposure? Temperature; wind velocity; barometric pressure? Some people get by without getting SAD completely; they feel the effects but not severely, in "subsyndromal SAD", while others go into full-blown depression interfering with their ability to function adequately day to day. 

 

Ten percent of any population report SAD or subsyndromal SAD, but fewer than one percent meet the criteria for a "seasonal pattern of major depressive episodes", according to Dr.Raymond Lam, associate head, department of psychiatry, University of British Columbia. The symptoms of SAD are well enough recognized in the general public to encourage people to invest in SAD lamps (which filter out UV rays), and green and blue glow glasses.

Some scientists argue the theory behind SAD that major depression can be influenced by the seasons is rooted in "folk psychology", more than objective data. A Canadian study making use of data from Statistics Canada surveys from 1996 to 2013 amounting to over half a million Canadians, found the proportion of those reporting major depressive episodes in January to be 70 percent higher than in August.

Several hypotheses are current; one that shorter winter days impact on the body's internal clock to cause "chrono-biological" disturbances. Decreased exposure to daylight hours impairs the regulation of serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline, the three major neurotransmitters that scientists believe to be disturbed in depression. Nighttime secretion of melatonin, the body's natural sleep hormone is disrupted by reduced light exposure, leaving people to waken feeling exhausted and drained rather than refreshed and rested.

So how does exposure to increased light from specialized light-emitting lamps work to relieve the symptoms of SAD? "The retina is being impacted by the extra light and signals are going back through neural connections to the hypothalamus and various nuclei that are connected to emotional centres in the brain", explains Dr.Rosenthal. What can be  helpful is regular morning walks, looking at the sky,  cognitive behavioural therapy, stress reduction and maintaining social activities.

Feeling Tired? Sleep-Deprived?

"It's what you would consider a modest effect. What's really important is it affects everybody. If you have a large portion of the population that is affected, then you would say even a small effect definitely has a public health impact."

"If it's really DST [Daylight Saving Time] that leads to that increase in traffic accident risk, then we should see that before 2007, the peak in traffic accident risk in spring that has been reported before should move to that week."

"It's hard when you use this large-scale observational data, so it's always really hard for us to say it's really that thing. But this is a novel piece of evidence that further supports our observations."

"Because DST is changing the timing of when you have to get to work -- it doesn't change when the sun comes up, it's just a change of  your clock -- you get less morning light and more evening light."

"Translation always takes some time. I think every change is hard. I think now is a good time [to do away with DST]."

Celine Vetter, director, Circadian and Sleep Epidemiology Laboratory, University of Colorado Boulder

  Getty Images

A new study. Which is to say, yet another study. To augment common-sense attitudes that argue against continuation of Daylight Saving Time. Said to have originated with the needs of a farming constituency, a century earlier. And having no place whatever in the world of today, where its seasonal implementation has been identified as a source of making people generally miserable adjusting to the daylight/time change, and bringing harm to a number of people in any community through fatal traffic accidents.

Tomorrow is the day that practise, not purpose, mandates that all clocks in most of North America jump forward an hour, back to Standard Time. The negative health effects outlined by scientists have long been pointed out but studiously ignored by those 'experts' in public policy who administer these long outlived guidelines of preserving light by timing our days differently. The new study published in Current Biology, traces a link between spring's transition to Standard Time with an increase in fatal vehicle accidents in the United States.

Such that, according to the researchers involved, the rate of fatal car accidents increases by roughly six percent in the week following the clocks being moved forward an hour annually, in the United States. Sleep deprivation is pointed to as the logical culprit; the misalignment of circadian sleep rhythms. Dr. Vetter's research team analyzed a database of fatal accidents that occurred in the United States between the years 1996 and 2017, a total of 732,885 cases, documenting date and time of each collision.

Other possible variables exist to determine whether DST was a factor in the accidents that the research team examined; changing weather patterns for one. One factor, however linked as proof of the time change's impact. The duration of daylight saving time in both Canada and the U.S. by four to five weeks took place in 2007. Prior to 2007 the first Sunday in April would begin DST, which would end on the last Sunday in October. Since 2007 DST begins the second Sunday of March, ending on the first Sunday of November.

Researchers found, through analyzing the accident data, that the increase in fatal car crashes certainly did move from April to March in 2007 when DST made its move. In Western time zones, Dr.Vetter noted, the accident rate increases since the sun rises at a later time there than in the east, requiring people to awaken earlier for work or studies and they are then exposed to less morning sunlight. That causes them to feel less rested; a term she has named "social jet lag". The study's conclusion was that DST be abandoned.

A return to Standard Time should be permanent, not only between the designated months of November and March, but throughout all months of the year. The 28 deaths a year caused by the time change, points out Dr.Vetter, could be prevented through abandoning the time change. And there is no reason whatever to remain on daylight saving time, other than inaction. The Province of Saskatchewan stopped switching clocks, preferring to remain in perpetual daylight savings time, since 1966. And that's a traditional farming province.

Rush hour traffic lines the horizon of a sunrise on March 18, 2014.ELIZABETH McSHEFFREY/DAILY HERALD-TRIBUNE/QMI AGENCY

Threats of Daylight Savings

"[Dangers exist of possible heart risks linked to the twice-yearly clock changes, spring and fall] especially in the first week after the spring shift."
"For most people, changing the time -- even if only by one hour -- may produce tiredness as a small inconvenience. Other people, however, can have more serious consequences."
"One day [Sunday] is clearly insufficient to become accustomed to waking an hour earlier in the morning."
"Take care in exposing oneself to abrupt changes of temperature in the immediate post-shift days."
Study, researchers, University of Ferrara

"Our body prefers a longer than a shorter day."
"A similar pattern has been suggested for DST transitions [as that of the effect on our biological rhythm when travelling several times zones to the east]."
Dr. Roberto Manfredini, study co-author

Daylight-saving time in 2019 starts on Sunday, March 10 at 2 a.m.

Yutong Yuan/Insider

According to a 2017 study out of University of Washington and University of Virginia, sentences handed down by U.S. federal courts between 1992 and 2003 tended to be longer immediately after the time change. On the Monday after the switch to daylight savings time, judges tended give 5 percent longer sentences than those on the previous and following Monday. According to the researchers, "judges doled out longer sentences when they were sleep-deprived". The authors whose study was published in Psychological Science, pointed out in effect, how grumpy people can be post-change, effecting our attitudes and our work.

Another study on the effects of the time change, presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in 2016, found the rate of hospital admissions for ischemic stroke -- when a clot in the arteries blocks blood flow to the brain -- was eight percent higher in the first two days following a time transition in comparison to either two weeks prior or two weeks following the switch to daylight savings.

Now, a new Italian study published in the journal Internal and Emergency Medicine once again points out the deleterious health effects for health-vulnerable people, those with underlying heart conditions, that occur in the wake of those detested time switches. The association between sleep and heart attacks has been demonstrated by studies where less than six hours of sleep is associated with high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and premature death.

Disrupted sleep leads us to consume increased calories while burning fewer of those calories, and one small study has shown that a single night of disrupted sleep alone can be sufficient to increase insulin resistance. Environmental impacts such as natural disasters can trigger heart attacks. Among the working demographic, Monday mornings are particularly stressful, with higher blood pressure and higher catecholamine levels (hormones involved in the 'fight-or-flight' response) occurring.

Monday, according to the Italian researchers, is as well a critical day for Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, the "broken heart syndrome", characterized by a sudden, temporary weakening of the heart muscle whose causation is thought to be through the onset of sudden emotional stress. Available literature on daylight saving time and heart attack was reviewed by the team from the University of Ferrara who discovered five conducted in Europe and two in the U.S., reflecting a total of 87,994 cases.

All these studies identified an association with an increased frequency of heart attack, with increases ranging from four to 29 percent, while three studies identified a higher incidence of heart attacks on the Monday following the time change. All studies were observational only, with no proof existing respelling cause and effect. Tellingly, it was the spring shift forward when an hour is 'lost' to the day where the deleterious effect was identified.

The circadian rhythm controlling the body's sense of day and night, when to rise and when to sleep, also regulates metabolism in the heart and other vital organs. In sensitive people, the hour of sleep lost may increase heart rate, blood pressure, stress levels and chemicals promoting inflammation. The researchers caution that people should heed the weather, not the fact that days stay brighter and are longer.

Cold weather, they point out, can constrict blood vessels and hence blood flow to the heart, potentially triggering heart attacks in susceptible people. Cardiologist Dennis Ko of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto explained the association between daylight saving time and heart attacks is doubtless real, but meaningful specifically for those with underlying heart conditions.

Daylight-saving time begins at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 10.

Brian Snyder/Reuters