When people living in many parts of the world move their clocks forward one hour in the spring in observance of daylight saving time (DST), their bodies’ internal, daily rhythms don’t adjust with them, reports a new study.
The finding suggests that this regular time change–practiced by a quarter of the human population–represents a significant seasonal disruption, raising the possibility that DST may have unintended effects on other aspects of human physiology.
Indeed, “after taking the seasonal adjustment into account, our results show that the human circadian clock does not adjust to the DST transition,” Till Roenneberg said. “This is especially obvious in the late chronotypes in spring when one looks at their daily activity patterns. Essentially, their biological timing stays on standard, winter time, while they have to adjust their social schedules to the advanced clock time throughout the summer.”
DST was struck into law within the context of wars – “safety and security” always rock-solid excuses. Core economic hopes have never achieved any proof in reality.
This year’s extension was supposed to help us in our War on Terror and Fighting Global Warming. Of course, Congress and the faith-based White House haven’t looked at any research since the mid-1970’s.
Only the ‘fall back’ is OK… the ‘spring forward’ is the bad one…
Daylight saving time sucks. Its a failed experiment that should end.
DST is supposed to save energy. How they figure that, I don’t know. Thankfully I live in Arizona. No DST here. We get all the daylight we can handle already.
I like DST. In fact, I always wonder why we save daylight in summer, when we have plenty, and not in winter, when we need it most. I’d shift by two hours and stay that way all year. It would be nice and easy to get up at sunrise, when the animals are first becoming active, and give plenty of daylight after work during the week.
Duh, I don’t believe I ever really adjust. It just seems to linger and linger. But, it won’t matter how much evidence is accumulated, our leaders have decided that this is the only way, just like “Global Warming” nothing is going to change their mind. GW is happening and we need to destroy our economy in order to save the planet, so that what we can overpopulate it, or is that the other half we’re going to be getting rid of a lot of humans to help with Global Warming? Maybe that’s what ‘Daylight Savings Time’ is all about, a little extra push to cut down on the overpopulation problem, but let’s face it DST only affects the 1st and 2nd world economies. These are the economies with the lower population growths, the 3rd world has the high birth rate and they probably don’t pay any attention to this at all. It’s normal for the so-called experts, to get their evil plan completely backwards, or is it?
A night owl myself, I love extra daylight at the end of the day…
you people actually go outside?
weird.
I’m from Venus where one day takes 5,832 hours to end.
Is there no topic that can escape the characteristically banal critiques of the administration from the great and wonderful Eideard?
We do a great many things that don’t exactly jive with nature, so why should we be overly concerned with this one? I would think that the general lack of sleep that we get has more of an effect on us than whether that sleep is shifted by an hour.
Enjoy DST! Go outside! Golf! Fish! Walk! Ride Bike! Anything! Start Living!
We only “fall back” in order to provide more daylight for the kids who catch the school bus early in the A.M. That’s fair.
Do like Saskatchewan, Redraw timezone so that although Saskatchewan is in the Mountain time zone claim we are Central time. Then Scrap DST and because of the change in timezone we are in effect observing DST year round although we claim our time is CST.
It is confusing as hell when dealing with everyone else though as we stay on a fixed time and some people still want Saskatchewan to adopt DST although that would put us two hours ahead of the standard if we did because of the creeative timzone map redrawing.
#9 and #10
My thoughts exactly. I agree with you both whole-heartedly.
DST seems to me to continue to be a good idea lending an extra hour of evening outdoor time to enjoy life.
Or it could give you an extra hour to bitch about it….
DST is another thing our current administration has messed up. It is no longer “Spring Ahead”; it is now “Winter Ahead”. Yes folks DST now starts in the winter.
The second Sunday in March is still winter!
And rumor has it that the extension in the fall into November is in support of the candy lobby so our kids can stay out later trick-or-treating on Halloween, get more candy and increase their risk of tooth decay and diabetes!
Remember: “Winter ahead, fall back”(c)
HQH
it’s meant to weaken our mental state. Similar to the effect midnight launches of harry potter have on the impressionable minds of kids.
Then they…. :/
DST has been proven to save lives (fewer traffic accidents); reduce crime; and save energy. It also makes life more pleasant. Daylight when we are sleeping is a waste.
Also #13, DST should start the same amount of time BEFORE the spring equinox, that it ends AFTER the autumn equinox. i.e. it should start say beginning of Feb (6 wks before equinox) and end at the beginning of Nov. (six weeks after the equinox) That would be based on the amount light available. In the past we seemed to base it on the temperature — stupid. At least we are now closer to a more rational approach.
#13 – “Spring forward, Fall back”
4.- Misanthropic Scott loves DST. He loves being told when to jump, and how high, by the government. I think what started out as a nice idea, back when we used oil & gas lamps to read by, became more of a bullying tool of our government. Like the war time rationing plan, it was more about making the citizen feel a part of the war, by distrupting their regular lifestyle in some way. There was no ration of how may cars or frigs you could buy, back then. Just food and fuel. I’ll bet the armed services were swimming in both, by then. So the ration was overkill, and more of a propaganga campaign. During WW2 (at least for one year) the DST lasted the entire year. No switching back and forth. But then the government switched it back to the schedule we “enjoyed” up until this year. It seemed to me to be more about forcing us to fiddle with the hands of clocks for no good reason, what with all the new energy efficient lighting and such. And newer electronic clocks were becoming self-DST adusting. But only with the older schedule. So to keep us on our “toes”, so to speak, the government approved a new DST schedule, at both ends of the cycle, so that the automatic devices programming was no longer any good. Only devices whose internal software could be updated were still useable for “auto DST” feature. And if you think out government is a bully, take a look at Israel’s DST schedule over the next 10 years. It’s different for every year! Other countries’ governments usually have a fixed DST schedule, but not always the same days as the US. Which doesn’t make much sense. The sun shines the same amount of hours on most of the northern hemisphere. Why all the variations?
BTW, why has nobody bothered to calculate how much energy would be saved if we didn’t have to worry about this foolish DST stuff? And, I’ll just bet that the US Congressmen operate by standard time, year round. These rules are just for us pions to follow.
I once hear a comedian say that DST was like cutting off your head, and standing on that, in order to see farther.
DST, absolutely worthless.
End it now and let us get on with more important things.
Cursor_
I think DST is a uneeded pain, too. But what’s with the “faith-based” non-sequitur? It’s not like W or the Christian right invented DST – I believe it was Ben Franklin’s crazy idea.
Maybe time should go metric? Would that help?
My two cents – I hate DST.
I live in saskatchewan, Canada. Where we are we never change time, spring or fall. It’s nice!
The only thing I miss about not having DST since moving to Arizona is the reminder to check the batteries in the smoke detectors.
The thing I hate the most about not having DST… Figuring out the time on the East Coast… Cripes.
Waking to a loud, buzzing, alarm clock is as mighty a disruptor to the normal bio-rhythms as there is.
Strange but true fact: The “internal clock” in humans is a 25-hour day. We’re already screwing ourselves.
it does not matter what you do to the clocks you are still going to get the same amout of light in the day
Daylight savings suck. All it does is confuse your animals who get all arsey with you when they are being fed/let out an hour earlier/later.
Can’t we just stop doing it?
DST = mental mastrabation.
Sure it makes you feel like you are doing something but in reality it acomplishes nothing. Go live on the equator if you want a more balanced season.
15. the reports I’ve read say differently, there are more wrecks due to tired people.
DST is for people who set their clocks five minutes fast so they get to appointments on time.
If the rumors are true that candy companies heavily lobbied for the current change to the daylight savings time standard, a standard which is hard wired into computer bioses and most operating systems, then congress is incredibly corrupt and inept to bow to these lobbyists and to not look at several more recent studies of DST. The daylight savings time extension has caused many headaches for OS manufacturers, BIOS manufacturers, and IT departments — just so the candy industry can make a few extra bucks peddling a lot of candy which is made overseas? I’m sure that associated costs to implement the DST extension far outweigh the additional profits which the candy industry may have seen. Numerous studies after the 1970s proved that daylight savings time does not save energy. Even though the daylight savings time extension assures longer hours for trick or treat, it also assures that for an additional few weeks many children have to wait for school buses in the dark and that many parents have to drive to work in the dark. I wonder if accident and highway fatality rates increased last year when this “experimental” DST extension was introduced. It would be a shame if statistics show that accidents and motorist fatalities increased just so the candy companies could potentially make a few extra bucks.
I believe DST was originally proposed by Benjamin Franklin, and the idea was indeed to save energy (so lamps wouldn’t have to be lit so early in the evening in the summer months, thus saving many gallons of oil).
Recent studies in Australia (have to find the link again) suggest that DST does not save any energy at all any longer (if it ever did), and advise that we abandon the practice for many of the same reasons stated above.