
Living on the wrong side of a time zone can be hazardous to your health - dmckeon
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/19/how-living-wrong-side-time-zone-can-be-hazardous-your-health/
======
dmckeon
Previously posted at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701806)

Thanks to HN poster acqq for finding the source paper:

[http://www.oseagiuntella.com/resources/GM_SLEEP_june2017.pdf](http://www.oseagiuntella.com/resources/GM_SLEEP_june2017.pdf)

"Sunset Time and the Economic Effects of Social Jetlag Evidence from US Time
Zone Borders

Osea Giuntella, University of Pittsburgh, Fabrizio Mazzonnay, Universita della
Svizzera Italiana (USI)"

------
skrause
> _People on the late side of sunset across U.S. time zones were 11 percent
> more likely, on average, to be overweight and 21 percent more likely to be
> obese. Diabetes was more prevalent, and the risk of heart attack increased
> by 19 percent. Breast cancer rates were slightly elevated, too — about 5
> percent higher than average._

And yet many people advocate the adoption of permanent DST, which would make
that even worse for _everyone_...

~~~
mc32
It looks like there is no good answer. I used to think syncing time with the
naval clock with the appropriate offset for location would be great, so that
the system drifts such that noon is always highest point in the sky would be
great, but it has too many consequences (like when traveling and an hour isn’t
an hour, or just syncing with other people)... so we’re stuck with a practical
but less than ideal solution.

~~~
wbl
What is wrong with standard time?

~~~
Mountain_Skies
People who play golf or engage in other outdoor activities like to maximize
the amount of daylight hours after work. Instead of adjusting their work hours
they have society and the government adjust the clock for everyone. Ideally
the clock would be left alone but not everyone's employer is willing to allow
for shifting one's work hours. Also schools aren't willing to seasonally
adjust their hours so parents who want to maximize afternoon and evening
daylight hours desire clock shifting.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Believe golf is usually played at dawn, which always kept it out of my
purview.

~~~
B-Con
Completely depends. Different people have different preferences. Different
locations have different weather benefits for time of day. When I played golf
I played during twilight almost exclusively.

------
mnw21cam
[https://outline.com/PG6H78](https://outline.com/PG6H78) for those of you
(like me) who just get a blank page.

------
scottlocklin
Just a quick glance at the map on that one and you can see it is "stupid data
mining tricks." Colorado (skinny) and Georgia (fat) could account for all of
the difference. There's a half dozen ways of falsifying this, but as its
Elsevier, we'll never know.

~~~
madcaptenor
I can't see the map (paywall).

One thing I'd want to check is the difference across time zone boundaries.
There's not much of a difference between western Georgia and eastern Alabama,
other than time zones; do they have different health outcomes? (Or, if you
want to say that maybe Georgia has more money than Alabama for public health,
look at a state like Tennessee or Kentucky where the time zone boundary isn't
the state boundary.

~~~
scottlocklin
Using the "web" thing takes me here:

[https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/living-on-the-wrong-side-
of-a-...](https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/living-on-the-wrong-side-of-a-time-
zone-can-damage-your-health/)

You can see there are huge cultural differences in a couple of places that
could account for all of it. I agree, checking the local difference is a
decent way to falsify this stinker. Bootstrapping a few states in and out of
the data set would do so also.

------
netsharc
Europe has a timezone spanning quite a large area, I looked up 2 small towns
at each side at almost the same latitude and compared their sunrise/sunset
times for today (according to Google):

Niš Serbia; 43.3209° N, 21.8958° E: Rise 04:52, Set 20:12

A Coruña Spain; 43.3623° N, 8.4115° W: Rise 06:53, Set 22:14.

A whole 2 hours difference!

~~~
i_rawr_u
Spain is more of a night owl culture anyways.

~~~
BurningFrog
It is, by the wall clock. But is it by the sun?

------
Timpy
Interesting correlation in the US: except for Pacific Time, it seems the
populations in each time zone are more dense on the sunrise side. Aren't these
health issues and economic outcomes typical of rural America?

------
Mountain_Skies
I used to live in a highrise with windows that faced west. Since we were above
the trees and there were no other buildings of similar height nearby, I got
full afternoon sunlight. Summers were miserable and I suffered from insomnia
greatly. Even blackout shades couldn't fix things due to the intensity of
leakage around the edges. I suffered from many health issues, most likely due
to poor sleep quality, during that time. It also harmed my performance at
work. Things improved quickly when I sold my condo and bought a house with my
bedroom facing south east.

------
aasasd
I occasionally reside in two cities, about a thousand km apart east-west but
in one time zone. Schedules between them diverge by about 1.5 hours: shops
opening and closing times, public transport schedules, etc. Pretty much the
only thing keeping them strictly in sync would be TV programming—which however
is staggered across the country anyway so it's not insurmountable.

So, if your country has set times for schools, business etc in a time zone
despite the difference in sun time, you probably should ask whose bright idea
that was.

~~~
ajmurmann
That's exactly what time zones are supposed to solve. Sounds like your country
has multiple time zones, but doesn't want to call them that.

~~~
aasasd
Sounds more like my country has fewer time zones than fifteen-degree chunks of
longitude. Which didn't prevent people from living their life by the sun.

~~~
lb1lf
We do here in Norway; I am in the GMT zone at 6 degrees east, while in the
extreme east of the country, they're squarely in GMT+2 at 30 degrees east.

All of the country is in GMT+1. The difference between standard and solar time
is quite pronounced, especially during DST.

~~~
aasasd
Difficult for me to sympathize in this case, considering how you managed to
squeeze both Sweden and Finland away from oil and fish, and how I almost wept
when paying for bus between cities in Norway.

~~~
lb1lf
Fun fact - we offered the Swedes commercial rights to sectors in the North Sea
as a trade for Volvo stock; the Swedish secretary of commerce basically said
'Hell, no!" at the last minute and backed out of the deal.

Edit: It wasn't the Secretary of commerce but the Volvo general assembly which
turned the deal down. My bad.

~~~
aasasd
Well, Volvo should probably outlast those oil reservoirs and the oil
dependence. And possibly the fish too.

------
adenta
One of the few nice things I can say about living in Indiana is how it sits on
the western side of the eastern timezone.

There was light outside when I was outside. It got dark when it was time to go
to bed.

Now living in the Bay Area, I feel when the clocks shift in November, it is
getting dark at like, 5PM! I am still working at that time. I do not like
having to go about my evening when it is pitch black outside, it is super
uncomfortable.

~~~
wil421
Georgia is the same and I like it on the western side of the Eastern TZ. I
would much rather have light after work than nothing. Maine would not be a
good place. I felt the same way at the equator 6-6 then darkness.

------
ZeroFries
Longer periods of light increases insulin resistance and blood glucose levels.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518141416.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518141416.htm)

------
efoto
As it often happens, the paper is ignoring people with DSPD aka night owls. We
almost never see sunrises, and I wish we had a permanent DST to have later
sunsets and longer daylight.

------
mattsfrey
I'd much rather have some extra daylight in the evenings, especially in
winter.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
There is no free lunch or free daylight. You end up robbing the morning of
light to get it in the evening. Even down here in Georgia schools often start
late during the winter when overnight freezing temperatures creates black ice
on the roads. Seasonally adjusted school hours would help avoid this but that
has a cascading effect on parent's schedules which in turn can cause issues
for employers. Tinkering with the clock just moved problems around,
advantaging some groups at the expense of others.

