Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- States are debating the merits of daylight saving time and its health impacts.
- Sleep experts argue clock changes disrupt circadian rhythms, increasing health risks like heart attacks.
- Proponents highlight benefits such as more daylight for outdoor activities, while opponents cite productivity losses.
SALT LAKE CITY — States that embrace daylight saving time are about to get an extra hour of light at the end of the day as the clocks change Sunday at 2 a.m. To judge by the growing should-we-or-shouldn't-we discussions, it appears that the practice may be losing its glow.
Absent change, daylight saving time this year is March 9 to Nov. 2.
Some believe the sun should set on daylight saving time. Others say if we decide as a nation to stop changing the clock, we should opt for permanent daylight saving time. The time change itself seems to be the main issue, while decisions about whether to embrace standard or saving time is to a large degree a matter of preference, though some sleep health experts say that standard time most matches natural circadian rhythm.
A survey commissioned by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in 2020 found that 63% of Americans would strongly or somewhat support not changing the clock. The group's release on the survey doesn't mention whether there's a preference among those surveyed for daylight saving time or standard time.
What does science say about the one-hour shift twice a year and the impact on health?
Sleep health experts say the human clock is harder to set than the digital version at bedside. The body operates on its own circadian rhythm, which can be thrown off by the change.
As the BBC's Science Focus reported, "When the clocks spring forward in March, for example, there's usually a 25% uptick in the number of heart attacks reported. It's thought disruption to our circadian clocks raises our blood pressure and the amount of cortisol, a stress hormone, in our systems, increasing the overall risk of a heart attack."
Sleep matters
There's no question that sleep matters, and what disrupts it should be addressed, whether it's a clock change or something else.
Consistent, high-quality sleep helps virtually every aspect of life, as Deseret News reported in its guide to sleep.
Studies prove that over and over. Harvard researchers have shown that young people who have better sleep habits are "incrementally less likely to die early" and said that as many as 1 in 12 deaths, from all causes, could be sleep-related. Sleeping seven to eight hours a night, not struggling often to sleep, sleeping without a medicinal aid and feeling rested when you get up could add almost 2½ years to a woman's life and five years to a man's.
Brief sleep deprivation can result in someone not feeling well or performing at their best. It can make someone irritable, unmotivated and a bit sluggish.
The serious problems come with chronic sleep deprivation and include diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, stress, depression, cognitive deficit, lowered sex drive, poor immune response and perhaps early death. Chronic sleep deprivation may in some also predict Alzheimer's disease, as the guide to sleep noted.
Enacted to save energy
The BBC reports that the change to daylight saving time is often credited to Benjamin Franklin but says it is not true, although he was a proponent who urged the practice in 1784 to reduce the amount of energy that was burned in the evening. Rather, a form of the practice traces back to Roman times, per BBC. And "it was the New Zealand entomologist George Hudson and the English builder William Willett who independently proposed that there should be state-level changes to timekeeping around the turn of the 20th century."
Germany went for it in 1916, and other European nations soon followed, embracing the extra hour of productivity at day's end and energy conservation, since oil lamps and candles weren't needed for that extra hour.
As Neil Degrasse Tyson noted in his YouTube explanation of the practice, daylight saving time borrowed an hour of light from the morning, when people were largely asleep, and made it available at the end of the day so they could work or play in light for an extra hour.
The U.S. — with the exception of Arizona and Hawaii, which both already had plenty of sunshine — passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966. Those two states chose not to change the clock. The Navajo Nation in Arizona, by the way, adopted daylight saving time.
Per the Tallahassee Democrat, "While a state needs congressional approval to stay on daylight saving time all year, staying on standard time all year only requires a state law. The state also would need to notify the U.S. Department of Transportation it will not be observing daylight saving time, the DOT said in an email."
Health risks or benefits?
A study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that "although chronic effects of remaining in daylight saving time year-round have not been well studied, daylight saving time is less aligned with human circadian biology — which, due to the impacts of the delayed natural light/dark cycle on human activity, could result in circadian misalignment, which has been associated in some studies with increased cardiovascular disease risk, metabolic syndrome and other health risks."
Those in the standard-time camp claim changing the clock back and forth increases risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke.
On the other side, those who suffer the effects of seasonal affective disorder benefit from the extra sunlight at the end of the day that's provided by daylight saving time. And its proponents say that extra light encourages folks to spend more time outside exercising or being active.
Light-loving people also say that more sunlight makes roads safer, and it's good for the economy. Those claims are countered by standard-time folks who claim there is more gas consumption. And they also say there's lower productivity because of the draggy feeling from that lost hour of sleep and its ensuing adjustment period.
