Labor & Employment Law

Why Are We Still Feeling 'Weird' After This Daylight Savings Time Switch? Or, Can the Daylight Savings Time Switch be Hazardous to Our Health?

This time each year clocks throughout the United States jump forward to mark the start of Daylight Savings Time – the practice of temporarily advancing clocks during the summertime so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. The practice has been criticized because it is said that people's livelihoods can be dramatically affected by DST, both positively and negatively – retail, sports and other events both benefit from extra daylight, for example, while this change can cause problems for farming and forms of evening entertainment, and other occupations and activities that are tied to the sun in a different manner; not to mention other things that rely on precise synchronized timekeeping, which can include everything from business meetings, travel, billing, record keeping and medical devices and sleep patterns, to name a few. When I travelled extensively, I used to dread travelling the Monday after DST in the spring. Airports were always filled with travelers who were an hour late!

But does DST actually pose a health risk? To some there are subtle effects; but with this slight disruption to people's normal body clocks, some serious effects may pose a threat to those who are already dealing with serious medical conditions. Can losing one hour in March and gaining one back in November really matter to a person's general wellness?
According to Yale Researcher, Dr. Xiaoyong Yang, the answer is ‘yes', under certain circumstances. 'Most people don't have much of a problem - they can adjust their body clock quickly. Eventually, after a couple of days, they already can adapt to the new schedule. But for some groups of people - people who have depression or a heart problem - there's some research that suggests that [they] have a higher risk of suicide and heart attack." Dr. Yang suspects the shifts in biological rhythms brought on by DST can actually trigger inflammatory or metabolic reactions in the body's cells. For most people, these events are of little consequence, but individuals with depression or serious heart problems are at more of a risk.

The semi-annual practice of changing our clocks an hour ahead and an hour back has also been reported to result in a high incident of work-related illnesses. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports, 'More than 1.5 billion men and women are exposed to the transitions involved in daylight savings time: turning clocks forward by an hour in the spring and backward by an hour in the autumn. These traditions can disrupt chronobiologic rhythms and influence the duration and quality of sleep, and the effect lasts for several days after the shift.' These disruptions may result in an increase in work-related accidents in the days following the time adjustment.
This practice is certainly a reminder of just how finely-tuned our biological rhythms are and how important a good night's sleep really can be. Now, if you'll excuse me … I'm going to take a moment for an afternoon nap to catch up on some of that lost sleep.

Follow these links for more:

Daylight Savings Time Switch May be Hazardous to Your Health

Shifts to and From Daylight Savings Time and Incidence of Myocardial Infarction

Daylight Savings Time can be (Mildly) hazardous to your health

Full post as published by Strategic HR Lawyer on March 15, 2011 (boomark / email).