Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — With the end of “Daylight Savings Time,” the United States, Europe, and most of Canada, along with many other countries, are resetting official clocks and moving the clock back by one hour, in line with local time. wintry.
Last March, the US Senate passed a bill to make daylight savings time permanent.
“The call to end the age-old practice of changing the clock is gaining momentum across the country,” Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, who introduced the bill for the first time in the US Senate, said in a statement.
The Florida legislature voted to make daylight savings permanent in the state in 2018, but the order cannot go into effect until it becomes federal law.
The bill has yet to make its way through the US House of Representatives and be signed by the president into law. In this case, the people of America will move their clocks forward clockwise and leave them that way.
However, a growing number of sleep experts point out that moving the clocks forward in the spring is wreaking havoc on our health.
Studies over the past 25 years have shown that a change of one hour disrupts the body’s rhythms tuned to the Earth’s rotation, adding to the debate over whether saving daylight savings time in any way is a good idea.
“I’m one of the many sleep experts who knows it’s a bad idea,” said Dr. Elizabeth Klerman, associate professor of neuroscience in the department of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Phyllis Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University College of Medicine in Evanston, Illinois, also opposes DST.
“Between March and November, your body gets less light in the morning and more light in the evening, which can disrupt your circadian rhythm,” Zee said.
Zee noted that standard time, which we enter when we turn back our clocks in the fall, is much closer to the sun’s day-night cycle.
This cycle has set our daily rhythm, or biological clock, for centuries.
Zee added that our internal clock controls not only when we sleep, but also when we eat, exercise or work, as well as “blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol rhythm.”
A call to ban DST came from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which said: “Current evidence better supports the adoption of standard time throughout the year, which better aligns with the human biological clock and provides distinct public health and safety benefits.”
what’s the harm
When our internal clocks in the solar day-night cycle shift by even one hour, we develop what sleep experts call “social jet lag.”
Studies have shown that social jet lag increases the risk of metabolic disorders such as diabetes, increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, worsens mood disorders such as depression, affects the digestive and endocrine systems and shortens our sleep.
It can even reduce life expectancy.
And a 2003 study found that getting an hour less sleep for two weeks had the same effect on thinking and motor skills as not sleeping two full nights.
Another study showed that reducing sleep by 90 minutes, that is, between the 7 and 8 hours recommended for adults, changed the DNA of immune cells and increased inflammation, which is a major cause of chronic diseases.
According to a statement from the Society for Circadian Research, making the time change permanent would make the chronic effects of sleep loss more severe, not only “because we have to go to work an hour earlier for an additional 5 months each year, but also because the clock Biology is usually later in winter than in summer with reference to the sun’s hour.
The authors concluded, “The combination of daylight saving time and winter time will make the differences between body and social clocks worse and negatively affect our health more.”
There are reasons for the US Senate’s unanimous passage of a bill to make daylight saving time permanent. Supporters say the extra daylight in the evening reduces car accidents and crime, and increases opportunities for commerce and leisure, as people prefer shopping and exercising during daylight hours.
However, research has shown both heart attacks and fatal car accidents to increase after moving the clock forward in the spring. The children also end up going to school in the dark, with disastrous consequences.