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Daylight saving time can seriously affect your health
- slackfan 3y agoYes. Getting at least one hour of sun between waking up and going to work and no sun after work, vs no sun before work and no sun after -- there's one that's preferable to the other, but I can't quite put my finger on it. People living at lower lattitudes need not apply.
- 7e 3y agoMany people don’t see the sun indoors at work. In that case, getting sun during at least one commute is the next best thing. Sun in the morning, rather than in the evening, will energize you for the day and is least likely to keep you up at night. On the other hand, it’s nice to have the sun for outdoor activities after work, but in the winter, is anyone really outdoors? Really, really bright warm, indoor lights in the afternoon is my solution.
- jltsiren 3y agoIt depends on what you mean by winter. It's generally easier to dress comfortably for cold weather than hot weather, and it's easier to dress comfortably for snow than rain. If the temperature stays consistently below freezing, there is snow on the ground, and it's not too cold and not too windy, it's usually very pleasant outdoors. But if it's dark, the temperature fluctuates above and below freezing, and the snow often melts and then freezes, you may as well conclude that the universe hates you.
- beretguy 3y agoReal solution: people need to work less. I say, 5 hour work day, 9-14. Sun in the morning and sun after work. Win win win.
- tempestn 3y agoI'll take an hour of sunlight after work, thanks.
- toss1 3y agoBenjamin Franklin's joke has gone too far. Year-round DST was tried in the fuel crisis in the 1970s. It was a disaster, waking up & commuting or waiting for school bus before dawn, and still coming home after dark. It was immediately dropped. Standard time year round (killing DST) is the only real solution.
- 7e 3y agoRetuning to solar time is the solution. The railroads don’t need four fixed time zones for the entire country anymore.
- sokoloff 3y ago“I’ll call you at noon tomorrow. In order for me to do that, please tell me your expected GPS coordinates.”
- pests 3y agoThat's how it already works though, just less granular.
- Verdex 3y agoI mean, that would be a problem in a world where the phone is physically stationary in a far corner of a house hooked to the wall with a wire. And where I would need to schedule time to sit near the phone so that I don't miss the expected call. However today, I can text ahead of time to see if it's a good time to call. Or check the shared calendar. Or (if we're sharing phone GPS data) I can find out near real time GPS data and approximate speed. Actually it wouldn't be out of the question for someone to make a product such that I verbally ask my phone to setup a noonish phone call with someone where our individual AI assistants figure out when that needs to happen based on our schedules and locations. And which can dynamically reschedule as real time events happen.
- thsksbd 3y agoIll call you at 16:00 gmt.
- hprotagonist 3y agoI cannot stress enough how much i deeply and utterly despise sunset at 16:14. Getting up before dawn? Great, i’m getting the drop on the day! Eating lunch in the fading light of the late afternoon, and dinner in full dark? The absolute pits.
- 7e 3y agoHonestly, you should be skipping dinner in winter. Your body isn’t active enough to need any food in the evenings. Just keep it as bright as you can until it’s time for bed, then switch everything off. It’s a lot easier to turn off artificial light than it is to try to sleep when the sun is still shining.
- bichiliad 3y agoI think that assumes a lot about what people do in the winter. I do most of my running in the winter because the summers are too hot to run, for instance.
- 7e 3y agoYes, it’s obviously a generalization. All else equal, the summer days are longer and the people are less lethargic.
- paulcole 3y ago> Honestly, you should be skipping dinner in winter Do you just sit around while your friends and family eat? Do you just not enjoy eating food? I’d be sad and bored if I skipped dinner as my default for an entire season.
- irrational 3y agoI swim three miles at a rapid pace before I go home in the evening. How far and fast do I need to swim to achieve an active state so I can eat dinner?
- 7e 3y ago
- smcleod 3y agoIt's absolutely stupid here in Australia - I can't believe we still have it. It makes the winters in Melbourne so depressing when it gets dark as soon as you finish work - it feels like you have no time / life in the evenings during the week.
- maxlamb 3y agoStill better than the UK where it gets dark hours before you finish work
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoBut that's standard time, not DST. From what you say, what you want is permanent DST.
- smcleod 3y agoDT means daylight time in Australia (AEST = winter, AEDT = summer). So I’d want permanent AEDT.
- ungamedplayer 3y agoImho, it doesn't matter what the change is.. long as it is consistent.
- Encrypt-Keeper 3y agoSo does the article, which is not named accurately. It says "Daylight saving time can seriously affect your health" and then goes on to explain how it's actually non-daylight savings time that affects your health.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hug 3y agoOn the other hand, I do not want to wake up three whole hours before sunrise for work each day. This isn’t just a preference, it’s a biological predisposition which is impossible to ignore. I’m a night owl. My best hours are after sundown. The business world isn’t built for that, and so I have to drag myself out of bed every morning at what to me is an ungodly hour. AEDT in the Summer is already bad enough, but the idea of doing AEDT over Winter and having to wake up even earlier fills me with a sort of abject despair.
- ARandomerDude 3y agoFolks, call your elected representatives. Otherwise this is pointless, semiannual complaining.
- whobre 3y agoMy elected representatives are too busy enriching themselves to do their jobs.
- WalterBright 3y agoDST is annoying and stupid, but the article's theory is garbage. People aren't that fragile.
- Apocryphon 3y agoHow else do you explain the rise in heart attacks correlating with it? https://apnews.com/article/health-science-us-news-accidents-weekend-reads-0316d6f8d11a41b3a32135770879cdf5 https://apnews.com/article/health-science-us-news-accidents-...
- goldemerald 3y agoThe study only compares heart attack increase over a couple days, not weeks. Once you account for longer time period after DST, there is no statistically significant difference between post DST heart attacks and the rest of the year. The explanation being that people who were going to have a heart attack had it sooner.
- tshaddox 3y ago> The explanation being that people who were going to have a heart attack had it sooner. Isn’t that still bad? Everyone who dies is just someone who would have died anyway later.
- WalterBright 3y ago[flagged]
- somewhereoutth 3y agoThe issue they raise is that the switch causes problems. Ok great, lets have long evenings all year round. Winter is made even worse by having the sun go down before you get home from work. On further reflection, it does make a lot of sense for the 'getting up/out zone' to be as stable as we can make it daylight-wise, with any benefits of extra sun-time to be added to the end of the day. So keep DST, and 'normal time' - thus and the switch. Meanwhile I'll hibernate until winter/'normal time' is over and I can go do stuff again without the sun giving up on me.
- toast0 3y ago> Ok great, lets have long evenings all year round. Winter is made even worse by having the sun go down before you get home from work. At this time of year, where I live, there's less than 10 hours of daylight. In December, it's less than 9 hours. You can f with the clock all you want, but winter is going to be dark. Probably dark when you head to work and dark when you get home. Conversely, in the summer, it's always bright. Again, it doesn't matter what the clock says, it's bright out not quite 16 hours a day, so bright when you go to bed and bright when you wake up. Changing the clocks doesn't help change the sun.
- Spivak 3y agoYeah but in theory you still have 9-10 hours to play with which for a given locality can completely cover the typical span of human leisure time. Like it's ridiculous but you could make sunrise at 11am sunset at the earliest 8
- sampo 3y ago> The issue they raise is that the switch causes problems. The scientific position is that permanent standard time is the most healthy option. And that permanent daylight saving time might be even less healthy, than the current switching. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0748730419854197 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541... More sources in these old comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691237
- dudul 3y agoEvery 6 months we get the same articles, the same studies showing that this DST BS doesn't save any energy, impacts people's health, etc etc and yet nobody is seriously talking about ending this shenanigans. Personally I like waking up early in the dark, but honestly I don't give a damn. Just pick one and end this thing.
- joezydeco 3y agoAnd, every time, all the articles fail to mention that we actually did remove DST, in 1974. And it came back one year later. https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-perman... Personally, I welcome DST. I really don't care for civil twilight at 3:00am (birds start chirping) in my part of my time zone during the summer.
- tempestn 3y agoIt sounds like you're welcoming standard time, and don't like DST. Opposite of the usual mistake.
- joezydeco 3y agoNope. I like Daylight Savings Time. In the summer time, the sun is up later in the evening to enjoy it, and it also doesn't rise at 4:00am. I'm happy to shift my time in the winter to get this payback later on.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoThe EU was going to get rid of it but it got derailed by COVID and it's gone cold. Also Brexit will probably make it politically difficult because of Ireland: the only way to scrap DST and keep the same time in Ireland and Northern Ireland is if the UK does the same. But the UK, living in fear of tabloids mostly, won't do anything public-facing that looks like following the EU, even though by some counts 75% ish of the population would rather scrap it. There's an annual flurry "will they scrap it" articles that are so repetitive they just straight up recycle them from other years now (this one refers to the wrong PM): https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/why-do-we-have-daylight-savings-time-uk-b2434828.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/why-do-we-have-dayl...
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoDaylight savings, at the cost of everything else.
- emilfihlman 3y agoDST is good. It provides variety, forces us to be flexible and helps with the amount of sunlight.
- artdigital 3y agoIn Japan we don’t have DST, but now with autumn/winter coming, it gets dark at like… 4:40pm. No matter how early I leave my work, it’s either already dark or getting dark, and it’s the worst. Having no daylight after work is very depressing, and a lot of people start seeking treatment around this time (info from my psychiatrist) I want something like DST here, where we’d just shift the hours an hour (or 2 hours) later in winter, or make a permanent adjustment to move JST by an hour.
- helix278 3y agoThat is the reverse of what summer time does in all countries. Summer time makes the evenings longer while postponing sunrise. The reasoning is that everyone is still in bed at 5 AM, so might as well postpone sunrise to 6 AM and getting that extra bit of light back at the end of the day.
- tmm84 3y agoI live in Japan as well and I can’t stand not having DST sometimes. Just knowing sunrise was about 3-4 hours before I woke up (8/9am) is enough to throw off my natural sense of time. My wife on the other hand when visiting the USA thought it was weird to see the sunset at 7pm. I guess it all depends if you’re willing to get up according to the sunrise and sleep after sunset or what time it is according to the clock.
- shmerl 3y agoWhat's the story with cancelling it in US? There was some plan to do it, but not sure how far it progressed.
- 8ytecoder 3y agoSenate passed it. House didn’t even pick it up. It’s doing a second round now but I don’t think it’s serious.
- shmerl 3y agoWhy wouldn't it be serious? I.e. is anyone really against it?
- TheCleric 3y ago“Others expressed concerns regarding the impact changing the clock — or not changing the clock — could have on areas that rely on tourism or those with large farming communities.” https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/3880009-bill-to-make-daylight-saving-time-permanent-reintroduced-in-congress/ https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/3880009-bill...
- tobiasSoftware 3y agoBecause the story was misrepresented and it wasn't truly voted on in the normal sense. In the US Congress, how many people are present matters to the vote. So if a bunch of Congressmen take off, it would give enormous power to the few people who remain. Because of this, there's a gentlemen's agreement that on those sorts of days, the people who are there just clock in and don't actually vote. My understanding is that the daylight savings "vote" was this type of situation where someone violated the gentlemen's agreement and voted on it without a planned vote. It doesn't really affect anything though because it would need to pass both sides of Congress and this was just one of them. As far as why anyone be against it, I'm not sure, but it wasn't "almost" passed as the media made it sound like.
- thatxliner 3y agoI personally was want daylight saving time (summer clock time) year-round, but a lot of other people seem to want the opposite (standard time year-round)
- 8ytecoder 3y agoBecause standard time aligns with the sun and our body’s natural cycle. It’s possible for people to wake up early if they like it. But daylight savings make everyone wake up early and there’s no way around it since society already disadvantages those who are the night owl phenotypes and you don’t want to be late for work. I struggle with sleep 8 months a year and naturally sleep better the 4 months of standard time.
- thatxliner 3y agoI see. Thank you for the response
- willywanker 3y agoIn India, most government offices keep separate summer and winter timings, and an official date for the start of winter/summer (Usually Nov 1 to April 1), just that it isn't universally mandatory. I don't see why this isn't a better solution than literally changing all the clocks.
- samarthr1 3y agoOnly where the winters are absurdly cold (i.e the north). Us South Indians enjoy more tolerable temperatures all through the year, as a consequence of which, our government offices don't change timings twice a year.
- Erratic6576 3y ago[dead]
- TomMasz 3y agoMy body remains on Standard Time all year, DST just messes me up. I can handle the earlier sunset just fine. Permanent DST? Please, no.
- isthatafact 3y agoDaylight after work should be a basic worker right. Without it, mental well being and potentially physical health suffer for many. Sunlight is one factor, and the opportunity to have a little time to exercise outdoors (often not possible before work) is another.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoLet's just call it what it really is: an authoritarian attempt to force everyone to change their schedules to accommodate the desire of a few interests to synchronize society's schedule to what best fits their preferred outcomes.
- seadan83 3y agoWill be shifting all meetings back by 30 minutes. I would want to do the full hour, but having our first meeting be at "8:30" would be painful for the team (conflicts with school schedule). On the next day lights savings time reset, those meetings will move forward by 30 minutes. Not quite a full sync to GMT, but partial. I somewhat hope a movement takes off where when the clocks change, everyone changes their business/working/school hours to negate the difference.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoI just don't believe this, I've been dealing with it for 42 years now and other than being a little sleepy the first couple of days, never had an issue. That said it's illogical and should be done away with, I would prefer permanent DST but could deal with ST as long as they quit doing this POS ritual.