Have you adapted to Daylight Saving Time, which began Sunday. March 10? It takes most of us about a week to adjust to losing an hour.
During World War I and World War II, DST was formally adopted as part of a global attempt to conserve energy. Today, fewer than 40 per cent of the countries in the world continue to switch their clocks twice a year according to Statista, a German online platform that compiles statistics, reports and insights.
I remember the confusion caused by DST during the fifties when I was a teenager living on a farm in northern Illinois. The neighboring state of Wisconsin, known as America’s DairyLand, didn’t go along with the time change because it didn’t work well for the farmers milking cows. In the Land of Lincoln, each town decided whether or not to change their clocks. I attended school in Durand, where the village opted to stay on standard time because it was the center of a farming community. My boyfriend, Kenny, lived in the small town but, like many of the residents, worked in a Rockford factory. Those employees had to juggle the two times because the city set their clocks ahead in the spring to give their workers more daylight in the evening. Every time my family drove into a nearby town, we looked for a public clock to determine which time they were using.
The Uniform Time Act of 1966 established the system of DST throughout the US. Only the states of Arizona and Hawaii have opted out of the time change. Will the rest of us ever quit moving the hands on our clocks twice a year. Since 2015, more than two-hundred daylight saving bills and resolutions have been introduced in almost every state according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some would abandon Daylight Saving Time and others would make it permanent year-round.
According to some research, changing our clocks can be dangerous. A study in 2020 by the University of Colorado Boulder found that fatal car crashes increase 6 per cent in the week following the spring switch to DST.
Sleep expert. Adam Spira, PhD, MA, a professor in Mental Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says scientific evidence points to acute increases in adverse health consequences including heart attack and stroke from changing the time. It is associated with heightened risk of mood disturbances and hospital admissions.
Spira says, “We function best when our sleep-wake cycle follows the sun. We get sleepy due in part to melatonin release when it gets dark. When we switch to Daylight Saving Time, we increase the amount of light we’re exposed to in the evening hours. The consequences of insufficient sleep include decrease in cardiovascular health, increases in diabetes and obesity, poorer mental health and lower cognitive performance.”
How do you feel about changing our clocks twice a year?