Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – With the end of ‘daylight saving time’, the United States, Europe and most of Canada, along with many other countries, are resetting their official clocks and moving the clock back one hour, in line with local time.
Last March, the US Senate passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent.
“The call to end the age-old practice of changing watches is gaining momentum across the country,” Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who first introduced the bill at the time, said in a statement. United States Senate.
The Florida legislature voted to make DST permanent in the state in 2018, but the order can’t go into effect until it becomes federal law.
The bill has yet to pass through the US House of Representatives and be signed into law by the president. In this case, the American people will move their clocks forward clockwise and leave them at that.
However, a growing number of sleep experts point out that moving clocks forward in spring is wreaking havoc on our health.
Studies over the past 25 years have shown that a one-hour shift disrupts the body’s rhythms tuned to the Earth’s rotation, adding to the debate over whether daylight saving time is in any way a good idea.
“I’m one of many sleep experts who knows that’s a bad idea,” said Dr. Elizabeth Klerman, an 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 daylight saving time.
“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 the 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 adopting year-round standard time, which aligns better with the body clock.” and provides distinct public health and safety benefits”.
what’s wrong
When our internal clocks drift by even an hour in the solar day-night cycle, 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 patterns.
It can even shorten 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, the recommended 7 to 8 hours for adults, changed the DNA of immune cells and increased inflammation, which is a major cause of chronic disease.
Making the time shift permanent would exacerbate the chronic effects of sleep loss, according to a statement from the Society for Circadian Research, not only “because we have to go to work an hour earlier for another 5 months of the year, but also because the Biology clock is usually later in the winter than in the summer than the sunshine time.
The authors concluded: ‘The combination of summer time and winter time will worsen the differences between body and social clocks and affect our health more negatively.’
There are reasons for the US Senate’s unanimous approval of a bill to make daylight saving time permanent. .
However, research has shown that both heart attacks and fatal car accidents increase after moving the clock forward in spring. Even children end up going to school in the dark, with disastrous consequences.
