
Health Experts Want to Stop Daylight-Saving Time - shawkinaw
https://www.wsj.com/articles/heres-why-health-experts-want-to-stop-daylight-saving-time-11583340645
======
herf
There's a lot of talk about acute risks--what happens a day or two after the
time change. Most articles you'll read are all about this.

The second topic, the main one that circadian scientists talk about, is
chronic risks, and I believe they are more important to our health. To follow
this logic, you have to believe that people will continue doing whatever it is
they do today (e.g., going to bed at midnight), and won't shift their schedule
around right away to optimize sleep--i.e. they will not recognize that their
body clock is set mainly by sunlight. The campaign to change school start
times has been going for 25+ years already, so fast changes here are pretty
rare.

When the clocks change, people wake up at a different _circadian_ time, and if
that time is too early, it is associated with worse health outcomes.

Some large-scale epidemiological tools have been used to figure these things
out. One compares the difference between sleep patterns on "work" days and
"free" days - like how much do you sleep in on a weekend? (Till Roenneberg's
"social jetlag"). A second method uses "position in timezone" \- comparing
people living on the eastern or western edge of a timezone in various ways.

Roenneberg's work from the mid-2000s showed that night owls suffer a lot under
"wake up before the sun" kinds of schedules (their "social jetlag" is bigger)
- it makes them fatter, more irritable, get more diabetes, etc. They don't go
to bed any earlier, but they're forced to wake up earlier.

Next, when you look at timezone position (this has been done for millions of
people), people on the western edge of a timezone (where the sun comes up
later but the clock is set at the same time) are quite a bit worse off for
cancer rates and obesity - 10-20% more for some kinds of cancers, and a
roughly 20% increase in chances of being obese.

I'm worried about these chronic health problems, so I've been writing and
advocating for standard time: [https://medium.com/@herf/why-standard-time-is-
better-e586b50...](https://medium.com/@herf/why-standard-time-is-
better-e586b500923)

~~~
ako
We better stop flying across time zones for work or holiday then, if the
impact is this severe.

~~~
contravariant
It's not like jet lag is a new phenomenon. It's just a bit unfortunate to
introduce minor jet lag to the entire population without giving them much
chance to adapt.

~~~
James_Henry
It's not just a bit unfortunate, especially as we learn more about how jet lag
isn't just about being tired but also can damage metabolic health.

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bhauer
Good reasons, for sure. And engineers want to stop changing clocks twice a
year for other good reasons. And many laypeople want to stop changing clocks
twice a year because it's bothersome and tiresome. I don't particularly care
_which_ time zone is ultimately selected for my state; I just want it to be
fixed year-round.

~~~
jachee
Time is relative, and "noon" is irrelevant. UTC everywhere is optimal and
ideal.

~~~
new_realist
Everyone has a smartphone these days. There should be fifty time zones in the
US, and your smartphones should adjust the time by a few minutes every night
so that sunrise is always at 7 am, which mimics what would occur naturally.
When you want to know the time elsewhere, you ask Siri. That should make
humans much healthier by keeping circadian rhythms naturally aligned, not
under continuous stress from artificial UTC, or even DST.

~~~
jachee
Only 50? The country spans almost 110° longitude, from West Quoddy Head
lighthouse in Maine (66 degrees 57 minutes west.) to Cape Wrangell on Attu
Island, Alaska (172 degrees 27 minutes east.)

That's nearly 1/3 of the globe. So why not ~450 down-to-the-minute timezones?
Or, why not subdivide those into 28,000 down-to-the second timezones?

How would we ever ensure that all those times were universally coordinated?

Bonus question: What timezone is the moon?

~~~
gerikson
To say nothing of Hawaii...

~~~
jachee
Funnily enough, the Hawaiian time zone is an hour past the single Alaskan one
is still further East than some of the Aleutian islands.

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TwoBit
The title here implies that there's a consensus among "health experts", but
there is no such thing. Click bait. All we have is some health experts saying
there are downsides to the back and forth switch

~~~
James_Henry
Do you know of health experts who explain the benefits of DST? I'm interested
in their arguments.

~~~
taborj
I think the point is there are health experts who want to stop DST, and there
are health experts who are ambivalent. It's disingenuous to say that "health
experts" want something if not all - or even the majority - actively want it.

~~~
James_Henry
With a field as large as "health experts" it would be a bit much to ask for a
majority. Do you think that the many health experts, the fact that the
American Academy of Sleep Medicine is publishing a DST position statement, and
the long list of chronobiologist societies doesn't suggest there is a pretty
good consensus?

You will always have a ton of ambivalent health experts on the matter because
for most health experts this isn't their field.

------
hu3
Brazil ended daylight-saving time recently:

[https://www.theepochtimes.com/brazil-has-nixed-daylight-
savi...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/brazil-has-nixed-daylight-saving-so-
should-everyone_2889754.html)

------
hyfgfh
You know you could change your working yours instead of changing "time".

Nope. Lets change time twice a year cause health problems, IT problems, car
accidents.

Its already time to use a global time and stop with this bs of timezones.
Timezones are an unreliable way to measure time the relation between time
space.

~~~
bsagdiyev
But is a great way to give sunlight hours a normal schedule regardless of DST.
Global time makes zero sense, like literally none.

~~~
jachee
13:00:00.00Z means the same moment wherever you are on (or off) the planet.

Does that help it make sense?

~~~
new_realist
No, because people use local time to decide when to go to bed, and when to get
up. Aligning that to the sun is the most important bit. Asking your smartphone
what time it is somewhere else is trivially easy no matter what method you
use.

~~~
CameronNemo
> people use local time to decide when to go to bed, and when to get up.
> Aligning that to the sun is the most important bit.

And yet, this is what DST gets so damn wrong.

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longtimegoogler
They didn't give any reason for preferring Standard Time over Daylight Savings
Time.

~~~
starmftronajoll
I was also frustrated by the article's lack of elucidation on that matter. I
think this is about as close as we come to an explanation:

>[T]here is a discrepancy between your biological clock and social clock,
which researchers refer to as “social jet lag,” Dr. Roenneberg said. Permanent
standard time is closer to the sun’s natural time so social jet lag is
reduced, he added. “Daylight-saving time means that we virtually live in
another time zone without changing the day-light cycle,” Dr. Roenneberg said.
“The problem is the misalignment."

Which makes sense on its own, but it doesn't account for the variance within
time zones. A Chicago resident experiences sunrise and sunset about an hour
earlier than a resident of Lubbock, Texas, even though they are in the same
time zone (Central). So you can't really say that Standard Time is the one-
size-fits-all solution -- and indeed, the Illinois Senate just passed a bill
[1] to make DST permanent in that state (although it is hamstrung by the same
federal regulations that other states face after passing similar bills).

[1] [https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-senate-passes-
bill-t...](https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-senate-passes-bill-to-end-
clock-change-during-daylight-saving-time/)

~~~
Talanes
That absolutely does not make sense even on it's own. What is "the sun's
natural time" supposed to mean? That seems to suggest that anyone not waking
up at whatever Dr. Roenneberg considers the correct time is "misaligned." Not
only does he not consider variance within times zones, he doesn't consider
variance within schedules.

Depending on schedule, location, and plain personal preference, any number of
time schemes could be "the best" for any given person. Ultimately it doesn't
matter whose on what time as long as we are standardized to reasonable large
areas, and pick something that's within a few hours of most people's ideal.

~~~
James_Henry
Roenneberg isn't stupid. He is saying that biological time and social time are
such that setting clocks closer to solar time ends up being healthier for more
people.

Also Roenneberg is quite clearly aware of the variance of daylight within time
zones and the health effect that this causes. I bet he's even written papers
on this effect!

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wdr1
I don't want to stop Daylight Saving Time. I want it year round.

The quirk, due to the Uniform Time Act, is that States have a choice -- either
_never_ use DST or _only_ use DST during Spring/Summer dates stipulated by
Congress.

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usr1106
The same research is quoted again and again...

But people do travel in an ever increasing amount over timezones. Often many
of them, often more than twice a year. At least here bar opening hours have
been significantly deregulated over the last decades. So you can go out and
drink until 4am or 5am and obviously people do that.

Compared to that the health effects of 1 hour time shift twice a year sound
ridiculous to me.

~~~
James_Henry
The article points out that travel related jet lag is often different because
it doesn't happen over and over and over however when you switch to daylight
savings time you may have to be waking up an hour earlier according to your
biological clock day after day after day.

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mindways
In addition to the public-health issues of heart attacks and car accidents,
the time-swaps are also a huge PITA for parents of young children. Kids
between half a year and three years old have sleep routines that don't shift
just because someone says the clocks have changed.

Fall back an hour? Congrats, your wake-up time just went from 5:30 AM to 4:30
AM because that's when your kid's still getting up. Spring forward an hour?
OK, you just lost an hour from that shining window between when your kid goes
to sleep and your own bedtime when you can actually get other stuff done.

------
keyle
In Australia, in Queensland, we've been trying to get this outdated state to
start using daylight savings for years.

95% of the population is in the south east.

In summer, the sun is up at 4:30 AM, which means the birds go off nuts at 4
AM. Sunset is at 6:30 PM.

On a side note, listen to this little as@#$%^%^*,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5SIs08k8uk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5SIs08k8uk)
and imagine him screaming out your windows at 4 AM.

Growing up in Europe, I remember the winters to be dark and miserable, but in
the summer we had sun till 9:30 PM.

There are many true and false arguments PRO and AGAINST DST.

The worst I've heard is "it will upset the cows with feed times" and "it will
fade more curtains".

The best argument I've heard against DST is that it would put the kids coming
home from school outside a sun-hour earlier, meaning there is more UV and it
is warmer. That's a valid case against, seeing it's so bloody hot here in
summer.

Another case, PRO DST study concluded that the lack of DST causes people to
drive home in peak hour with the sun in their eyes, causing more accidents.

At this point, I think DST is still a good thing. It's good for the economy.
We don't go out to have dinner in the dark, for example. But I'm getting too
old to care.

This article's arguments are very thin in my books.

~~~
porjo
> In Australia, in Queensland, we've been trying to get this outdated state to
> start using daylight savings for years.

Speak for yourself. I live in the south east and don't want DST.

> 95% of the population is in the south east.

That's not accurate - where did you get that figure? Regardless, Western
Australia has an even greater percentage of its population in the southern
part of the state than Queensland, and it voted against DST _four times_ over
the last 40 years.

> it's so bloody hot here in summer.

Not to mention by the time you go to bed the temperature is cooler without
DST.

~~~
keyle
I'm interested to hear why not?

re-95% I should have said 'coastal'.

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rekabis
As long as we can all agree to stick to standard time, I will be all for any
such motion.

If you want to go to permanent DST, that’s gonna have to be a hard no from me,
dawg. I’d rather suffer continued switching of hours than move to permanent
DST.

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ianai
Could a US president change this unilaterally?

~~~
_delirium
No, it would require an amendment to the Uniform Time Act [1]. Under current
law, states can opt out of DST (subject to some conditions), but the federal
executive branch can't unilaterally force them to opt out.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Time_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Time_Act)

~~~
dexterdog
So then you create an executive order and then withhold federal funds from the
states that don't comply. I wish states would have a backbone but with the
lion's share of taxes going to DC they are just powerless.

~~~
ianai
I know you mean well but that software would just not be used.

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Max_aaa
As someone who lives in NZ and works in the US market, I cannot wait for this
to end. As every year I have 4 time switches.

~~~
jobigoud
I have missed a certain weekly meeting twice in the past few years during that
specific week where Europe has changed hours but the US hasn't...

