Leave to the wealthy idiotic senators who design a permanent time system around their golf outings disregarding public health and the safety of our children.
Sleep experts say Senate has it wrong: Standard time, not daylight saving, should be permanent
Sleep experts widely agree with the Senate that the country should abandon its twice-yearly seasonal time changes. But they disagree on one key point: which time system should be permanent. Unlike the Senate, many sleep experts believe the country should adopt year-round standard time.
Interesting: The dark side of permanent daylight savings time: How the Senate bill eliminating the changing of the clocks may make Americans sick
Congress has taken a step towards fixing a federal policy that causes serious health problems across the entire US population.
Unfortunately, it is a step in exactly the wrong direction.
On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the widely despised annual changing of the clocks – which occur once in the spring and again in the fall.
The bill would make daylight savings time (DST) permanent starting in 2023.
Don’t get me wrong — establishing a fixed, national, year-round time is a good thing.
But nearly the entire scientific community is opposed to how they’re going about it.
The truth is – we just don’t know what the long-term health effects of permanent DST will be on Americans.
This would be a massive, society-wide experiment.
However, we have good reason to believe that permanent DST will make Americans sicker and more vulnerable.
Here’s what we do know – the twice-annual transitions between standard and daylight savings time are bad for our health.
The human body is regulated by three major clocks.
One is internal, it is the biological clock, also known as the circadian clock. The internal time system is regulated in our brain and strongly cued by light.
The other clock is external and artificial. It is the clock on the nightstand.
The third clock is sun time.
Ideally, all three clocks should strike noon when the sun is directly overhead.
But when those clocks are out of alignment — even momentarily — people suffer.
Recorded instances of heart attack, stroke and other serious conditions spike every year when clocks change in the spring.
Hospital admissions rise and there are increased risks of mood disorders and car crashes.
This is because the most powerful cue to our circadian rhythm – light – is abruptly shifted.
Circadian rhythms react to light in a predictable fashion and when the artificial time is changed it results in circadian misalignment.
Additionally, people who are walking around tired are suddenly deprived of one extra hour of rest by the alarm.
Quality of sleep declines.
Sleep is most restorative activity that a human being can experience. When we don’t sleep enough our physical, mental and emotional health declines.