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Living on the wrong side of a time zone can be hazardous to your health
- dmckeon 7y agoPreviously posted at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701806 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701806 Thanks to HN poster acqq for finding the source paper: http://www.oseagiuntella.com/resources/GM_SLEEP_june2017.pdf http://www.oseagiuntella.com/resources/GM_SLEEP_june2017.pdf "Sunset Time and the Economic Effects of Social Jetlag Evidence from US Time Zone Borders Osea Giuntella, University of Pittsburgh, Fabrizio Mazzonnay, Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI)"
- mnw21cam 7y agohttps://outline.com/PG6H78 https://outline.com/PG6H78 for those of you (like me) who just get a blank page.
- skrause 7y ago> People on the late side of sunset across U.S. time zones were 11 percent more likely, on average, to be overweight and 21 percent more likely to be obese. Diabetes was more prevalent, and the risk of heart attack increased by 19 percent. Breast cancer rates were slightly elevated, too — about 5 percent higher than average. And yet many people advocate the adoption of permanent DST, which would make that even worse for everyone...
- mc32 7y agoIt looks like there is no good answer. I used to think syncing time with the naval clock with the appropriate offset for location would be great, so that the system drifts such that noon is always highest point in the sky would be great, but it has too many consequences (like when traveling and an hour isn’t an hour, or just syncing with other people)... so we’re stuck with a practical but less than ideal solution.
- wbl 7y agoWhat is wrong with standard time?
- jvolkman 7y agoDepends on your location I guess. Sun sets at 4:20 in the winter in Seattle under standard. So if we had to choose just one, I think many people would rather push that to 5:20.
- madcaptenor 7y agoBut do you want a 9 AM sunrise?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seattle_spring 7y agoAs someone who lives in Seattle: I genuinely don't care what time the sun rises.
- cm2012 7y agoSince I work from home it doesn't bother me anymore. But I used to hate commuting before the sun rose.
- alistairSH 7y agoI'm stuck at the office either way. Give me the evening daylight so I can enjoy my off-work time.
- dgemm 7y agoSounds good!
- jvolkman 7y agoI think I'd prefer a 9 AM sunrise in the winter over the 4:11 AM sunrise that we'd currently be having if we were on standard time in the summer.
- baxtr 7y agoOn the other hand that would meant that people in Spain are worse off than people in Portugal or England. Is that the case?
- skrause 7y agoYes: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/22/spaniards-sleep-time-zone-spain https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/22/spania...
- el_cujo 7y agoI can't argue with the data for the population, but just anecdotally I definitely am more active during DST. The fact that it's warmer during this period definitely helps some, but I mostly go to an indoor gym so it's not as big of a factor as someone who runs outside. It's just harder for me to be motivated to leave my house at 7 PM when its been dark for 90 minutes vs. if I've still got 2 hours of daylight.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoYes, but consider what this would mean during the winter. It would still get dark significantly earlier than in summer, and it would likely be dark when you wake up.
- Karunamon 7y agoWorse than twice-yearly upheavals?
- ajmurmann 7y agoAs someone who would prefer to stay on regular time I’d love to agree with you. Unfortunately, I don't think that argument holds. Switching to DST will make the sun set even later, but it also will make it rise later and move people's morning appointments back.
- metafunctor 7y agoPeople tend to schedule meetings based on the time of day, not the sun. A 9am DST meeting is the same, sun-wise, as an 8am non-DST meeting.
- geggam 7y agoSpeaking as someone from a non changing timezone, (Phoenix area) I can tell you I am much better rested than I was living where the time changed. I dont care if you fix the time at DST or ST, not changing the time is better for you IMO.
- BurningFrog 7y agoYou're of course also from a quite southern area.
- cnml 7y agoLate sunset also ruins the concept of a beautiful summer evening. With DST it gets dark at 22:30 here, much too late to enjoy an evening. DST is unnatural.
- mattsfrey 7y agoI'd much rather have some extra daylight in the evenings, especially in winter.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoThere is no free lunch or free daylight. You end up robbing the morning of light to get it in the evening. Even down here in Georgia schools often start late during the winter when overnight freezing temperatures creates black ice on the roads. Seasonally adjusted school hours would help avoid this but that has a cascading effect on parent's schedules which in turn can cause issues for employers. Tinkering with the clock just moved problems around, advantaging some groups at the expense of others.
- ZeroFries 7y agoLonger periods of light increases insulin resistance and blood glucose levels. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518141416.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518141416.h...
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoI used to live in a highrise with windows that faced west. Since we were above the trees and there were no other buildings of similar height nearby, I got full afternoon sunlight. Summers were miserable and I suffered from insomnia greatly. Even blackout shades couldn't fix things due to the intensity of leakage around the edges. I suffered from many health issues, most likely due to poor sleep quality, during that time. It also harmed my performance at work. Things improved quickly when I sold my condo and bought a house with my bedroom facing south east.
- aasasd 7y agoI occasionally reside in two cities, about a thousand km apart east-west but in one time zone. Schedules between them diverge by about 1.5 hours: shops opening and closing times, public transport schedules, etc. Pretty much the only thing keeping them strictly in sync would be TV programming—which however is staggered across the country anyway so it's not insurmountable. So, if your country has set times for schools, business etc in a time zone despite the difference in sun time, you probably should ask whose bright idea that was.
- ajmurmann 7y agoThat's exactly what time zones are supposed to solve. Sounds like your country has multiple time zones, but doesn't want to call them that.
- aasasd 7y agoSounds more like my country has fewer time zones than fifteen-degree chunks of longitude. Which didn't prevent people from living their life by the sun.
- lb1lf 7y agoWe do here in Norway; I am in the GMT zone at 6 degrees east, while in the extreme east of the country, they're squarely in GMT+2 at 30 degrees east. All of the country is in GMT+1. The difference between standard and solar time is quite pronounced, especially during DST.
- aasasd 7y agoDifficult for me to sympathize in this case, considering how you managed to squeeze both Sweden and Finland away from oil and fish, and how I almost wept when paying for bus between cities in Norway.
- lb1lf 7y agoFun fact - we offered the Swedes commercial rights to sectors in the North Sea as a trade for Volvo stock; the Swedish secretary of commerce basically said 'Hell, no!" at the last minute and backed out of the deal. Edit: It wasn't the Secretary of commerce but the Volvo general assembly which turned the deal down. My bad.
- scottlocklin 7y agoJust a quick glance at the map on that one and you can see it is "stupid data mining tricks." Colorado (skinny) and Georgia (fat) could account for all of the difference. There's a half dozen ways of falsifying this, but as its Elsevier, we'll never know.
- madcaptenor 7y agoI can't see the map (paywall). One thing I'd want to check is the difference across time zone boundaries. There's not much of a difference between western Georgia and eastern Alabama, other than time zones; do they have different health outcomes? (Or, if you want to say that maybe Georgia has more money than Alabama for public health, look at a state like Tennessee or Kentucky where the time zone boundary isn't the state boundary.
- scottlocklin 7y agoUsing the "web" thing takes me here: https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/living-on-the-wrong-side-of-a-time-zone-can-damage-your-health/ https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/living-on-the-wrong-side-of-a-... You can see there are huge cultural differences in a couple of places that could account for all of it. I agree, checking the local difference is a decent way to falsify this stinker. Bootstrapping a few states in and out of the data set would do so also.
- 3JPLW 7y agoI know we all love the low-brow dismissal and hating on social science and paywalls (I certainly do!) but this comment is terribly worthless. It's easy to find the paper (it's even linked below), and they of course do attempt to correct for many covariates including geographic locations and socioeconomic effects.
- netsharc 7y agoEurope has a timezone spanning quite a large area, I looked up 2 small towns at each side at almost the same latitude and compared their sunrise/sunset times for today (according to Google): Niš Serbia; 43.3209° N, 21.8958° E: Rise 04:52, Set 20:12 A Coruña Spain; 43.3623° N, 8.4115° W: Rise 06:53, Set 22:14. A whole 2 hours difference!
- i_rawr_u 7y agoSpain is more of a night owl culture anyways.
- BurningFrog 7y agoIt is, by the wall clock. But is it by the sun?
- kartan 7y ago> Niš Serbia; 43.3209° N, 21.8958° E: Rise 04:52, Set 20:12 A Coruña Spain; 43.3623° N, 8.4115° W: Rise 06:53, Set 22:14. People get surprised that in Spain the lunch hour is around 13:30 instead of 12:00. But when you take into account the sunrise/sunset times it corrects part of the difference. Maybe a fix: reduce working hours (school time, etc.). That will save lives and facilitate a more healthy population. We have the data. We know the causes of why people are dying. News makes us more worried about terrorist attacks, that kill really very few people and have no impact beyond the publicity that news provides than the real risks to our health. - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha... - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/01/perfect-storm-austerity-behind-130000-deaths-uk-ippr-report https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/01/perfect-sto... - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-emissions-test-scandal-causes-38000-early-deaths-year-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-e... - https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-overdose-crisis https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-overdos... We don't need to do everything perfectly. We do not need to panic. But, we can improve a lot how we deal with risks to our health.
- salex89 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Timpy 7y agoInteresting correlation in the US: except for Pacific Time, it seems the populations in each time zone are more dense on the sunrise side. Aren't these health issues and economic outcomes typical of rural America?
- adenta 7y agoOne of the few nice things I can say about living in Indiana is how it sits on the western side of the eastern timezone. There was light outside when I was outside. It got dark when it was time to go to bed. Now living in the Bay Area, I feel when the clocks shift in November, it is getting dark at like, 5PM! I am still working at that time. I do not like having to go about my evening when it is pitch black outside, it is super uncomfortable.
- wil421 7y agoGeorgia is the same and I like it on the western side of the Eastern TZ. I would much rather have light after work than nothing. Maine would not be a good place. I felt the same way at the equator 6-6 then darkness.
- efoto 7y agoAs it often happens, the paper is ignoring people with DSPD aka night owls. We almost never see sunrises, and I wish we had a permanent DST to have later sunsets and longer daylight.