What Daylight Savings Does To Your Brain | Business Insider Explains | Insider News

Introduction Daylight savings is actually incredibly controversial, and the American Medical Association is pushing for us to end daylight savings and just go to standard time because of the damage that it does to our bodies. I'm Mia de Graaf. I'm a health editor at Business Insider. History Of Daylight Saving Time So daylight savings was implemented as a sort of postwar measure to save energy. The idea was that if you move the clocks forward an hour, then the daylight will linger longer into the evening. So then you don't need to use electricity and be using energy in those evenings. About a third of the world observes daylight savings, DST Around The World most of those countries are in Europe. In the US, every state except for Hawaii and Arizona observe daylight savings. In Mexico, recently, they got rid of daylight savings but made an exception for states that are near the US border, because it's so ubiquitous here. Doctors Say DST Is Bad For Our Health If you ask doctors about daylight savings, they're pretty uniform in their belief that this is bad for our health, particularly that spring forward, when we lose an hour of sleep and it's darker in the mornings and lighter in the evenings. The main issue is that it affects our natural hormone cycle. Our bodies are in tune with the outside world. Effects On Our Hormone Cycle We're reacting to how our society is set up and then also the world that we live in, so daylight and nighttime. During the day, your circadian rhythm, our body's natural cycle, is playing this intricate dance where your different hormones are triggering different things that will allow you to conduct yourself. So it's speeding up your metabolism. It's triggering digestion and hunger at different times. That way, you have the energy to move about the day and experience things. At night, when the nightfall comes, that's when your body releases melatonin. It makes you sleepy. It makes you want to sleep. And sleep is so crucial during that period, because that's when we also release growth hormones. Your body temperature also decreases, which conserves energy, and that's when your brain does memory consolidation. So it's really crucial that we're allowing our bodies to follow through this cycle of the circadian rhythm. When you throw it off-kilter, that can have very serious short- and long-term impacts. So once you're defying your circadian rhythm, you're basically triggering jet lag. And jet lag has impacts such as inflammation. It throws your stress hormones into disarray. These are the kinds of things that are linked to higher rates of diabetes, higher rates of obesity, hypertension. Doing that on a regular basis, you know, flying to different countries all the time, would put your body at risk of those things. Doctors believe that springing our clocks forward once a year, every year, is an unnecessary measure that's putting us all at risk of this. It takes us weeks or even months to adapt to that new rhythm. Rise In Car Crashes Another negative impact is the rise in car crashes. A study in 2020 looked at 730,000 deadly car crashes that happened from 1996 to 2017. They found that there was a 6% higher chance of accidents in the weeks after the clocks changed for daylight-saving time in the spring. The study estimated that during those 22 years, around 627 deaths could be linked to this change in the clocks. Everyone starting their day in the dark, drivers on the road are sleepy and driving in the dark. Pedestrians, including kids going to school, are walking around in the dark. It just increases the risk of car accidents. There's also a link between daylight-saving time Rise In Heart Attacks and an increased risk of heart attacks. So the Monday after we spring the clocks forward, we see a 25% increase in heart-attack hospital visits. Conversely, the Tuesday after our clocks fall back, we see a 21% decrease in heart-attack hospital visits. It's not clear exactly why this happens, but researchers believe that the shift forward disrupts sleep cycles and increases stress to such an extent that it compounds with other medical conditions. Poor Mental Health Daylight-saving time is associated with poor mental health, and it kind of works both ways. So when you spring the clock forward, it can throw your mood off, because the mornings are darker, and you're not getting that sun exposure in the morning. Sun exposure in the morning is really associated with a good mood, but then because we sprang them forward, they have to fall back. And when they do fall back, it's such a stark shift as we're entering into winter, and we do see this increase in depression. In a study in 2017, researchers found an 11% increase in hospital visits for depression when the clocks fell back in the fall. Impact On Productivity Daylight-saving time also impacts our productivity. So when you spring the clocks forward, you lose an hour of sleep, surprise, surprise, you're not so productive. On Monday, the week after daylight-savings time comes into effect, we see an increase in what's known as cyberloafing, which is the act of wasting time online while at work. Studies have found that people are at work and they're browsing websites that aren't related to work, because they're feeling sluggish, they're feeling tired. So if you're feeling a little sluggish, you're not special. We're all experiencing the same. It's really natural. So politicians have been up The Political Battle To End DST in arms about daylight-saving time for years, and actually in 2022, a bill was introduced in the Senate, which was called the Sunshine Protection Act. The goal of the Sunshine Protection Act was to make daylight-saving time permanent year round for every state in the US except for Hawaii and Arizona. It was voted for, and it halted in the house, so it didn't pass through. But doctors were actually really glad that it didn't pass through, because you would have dark mornings pretty much year-round. Doctors were saying what we really need is permanent standard time. That's what Hawaii has, that's what Arizona has, that's what Indiana had until recently. Right now, there are 19 states pushing for permanent daylight-saving time. There are also nine states pushing for permanent standard time. Everyone is always arguing about it. We're not going to come to a consensus. But the interesting thing is, we actually tried this in the '70s. During the oil crisis and the energy crisis of the '70s, the US implemented permanent daylight-saving time in 1974. It was an absolute disaster. Everyone hated it. There was an increase in in car crashes. Kids weren't getting much sleep. It was abolished within a year. Solutions Here are a few things you can do to offset the negative effects of daylight-saving time. Stay active. Regular exercise is just going to help your body get back into its natural rhythm. Try to anticipate your sleep schedule. If you can change your clock and think about it the night before, that will help you get into the mindset.