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.

 

 

 

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