Once again, we as a nation, except for two states and five territories, have collectively decided to arbitrarily call one particular hour, one hour later. Once again we had to go around adjusting our less smart or strictly mechanical devices with a clock function to the new made up measure of time, and we need to stop.
One reason to do so is because it’s killing us according to Business Insider. In the days after the time change there is an increase in strokes and heart attacks. And due to the one less hour of sleep, there is an increase in errors at work and traffic accidents. I know I lost sleep not only due to hour the springing forward early Sunday morning, but also because of the difficulty in getting to sleep due to the fear of not waking up in time.
Daylight saving time changes have both short-term and long-term deleterious effects. Scientific American tells us the time change has effects during the whole period of March to November. Our circadian rhythms are disrupted when we pretend noon is actually one p.m. Additionally, natural light or its lack influences how our bodies release hormones like cortisol and melatonin.
The western edge of a time zone is where the light change of daylight saving is most pronounced because the light comes and leaves later than it does on the eastern edge of the time zone. The “Western Edge” effect is bad news.
The double whammy of sleep disturbance and “circadian misalignment” causes people who live on the western edge to be more likely to have breast cancer and heart disease, as well as metabolic disorders such as diabetes. These health issues are similar to those faced by shift workers, or people who work at any hours outside of daylight hours. In both folks, problems arise from following the clock and not the sun.
The thought of having an extra hour of daylight is popular all right. According to the sleepfoundation.org more would choose it than not. Congress has even written legislation called the Sunshine Protection Act that would make daylight saving all year long that thankfully hasn’t gone anywhere.
We are not getting an extra hour. There will still be 24 hours in a day though proportionally more sunlight in each day until the summer solstice, when it will reverse.
We are not even saving energy. The power we aren’t using in the evening is going to be used in the morning as we get dressed in the dark. Daylight saving is just a trick by some early birds trying to get everyone to get up before sunrise. That and it was also part of the war effort during WW I and II.
Consider sundials, lovely ingenious clocks that require no power. I suppose there might be a way to reposition them in order to make them reflect this wrong consensus on time. But setting cranes and bulldozers to Stonehenge is not the solution we are looking for.
