Daylight saving time can seriously affect your health | Hacker News Reader

Daylight saving time can seriously affect your health

apnews.com

146 pointsbelltaco125 comments

I 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.

Honestly, 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.

I 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.

Yes, it’s obviously a generalization. All else equal, the summer days are longer and the people are less lethargic.

> 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.

I 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?

If you spend one a half hours every day swimming, I commend you.

Your comment is a bit low effort. Did you assume I was talking about you specifically? That’s a bit absurd.

To be fair, you did say “you” and “your”, inviting the reader to assume you are writing specifically for them.

I am grown up in Germany with the old wisdom that lunch should be the main meal and dinner should lighter and around 6 pm, 7 at the latest. Nothing after that.

Whether that's correct or not I don't want to debate. There are for sure many different opinions. I know only 1 obese person who might have been living somewhat according to that rule, the vast majority isn't overweight.

How can you have your main meal for lunch and not feel sleepy for the rest of the day?

You don't have massive meals and not much alcohol if any

in Spain they do it by taking a nap! extremely civilized

Why does it matter what number is displayed on the clock? Can't you just wake up earlier or later to your preference?

Not if they’re working.

Or have kids in school.

lol. Sure, as long as you don’t have to report to a job everyday. Very few have the privilege of adjusting their sleep/wake cycle to correspond with the changing seasons.

Well the daylight savings advocates who want to force 10 pm sunsets on everybody can wake up earlier if they wish to have an extra hour of sunlight.

For everyone else, no. We cant sleep in for an hour.

That's not how it works.

The time when my kids go to school is determined by the current official time, not when I choose to wake up. It's regulated by federal and state laws, and local bylaws.

The visitation times at the hospital, court appearances, etc. are all set to the current official time, not when I choose to wake up. It's regulated by federal and state laws, and local bylaws.

The airport curfew is determined by the official time, not when I choose to wake up. It's regulated by federal and state laws, and local bylaws.

Your point would make sense if everyone had to do only one thing every day, and people existed in small (< Dunbar's number) isolated communities.

But we don't: people do multiple things, interact with different communities; all these schedules are interdependent, and many of them set by legislation. Changing all of them is a problem that requires coordination, which is exactly the kind of thing we maintain governments for.

The current coordination point is that it's convenient if all these things move one hour forward in the summer, and the mechanism to achieve this is that we change clocks twice a year, instead of the vastly more difficult alternative of maintaining two separate sets of schedules for everything.

But it looks like consensus is moving on (again!), and people no longer think that pushing everything forward by one hour in the summer is a good idea (or rather, they think moving it back for the winter is a bad idea). So they'll use the coordination mechanism to make it so.

The person you are arguing against and 'splaining to is on the same side of the argument you are. He's turning the other side's argument against them. He's saying "if you think schedules are flexible, flex your schedule"

of the things you list, the school schedule is the most hard and fast thing. for everything else you mention, you're presented with a window where so long as you can make _some_ time within that window you're fine. is shifting the window an hour in either direction really all that consequential? already there's enough variance in typical day jobs and eating habits that you and i probably differ by an hour and are still able to make it to hospitals, courts, airports, etc.

do we adjust school start times today? yes: if you've ever experienced two schools consolidating, or just demographic shifts in the areas being served by a school, it's not uncommon for start times to change. so regardless of how we coordinate at the whole-society level, we'll still do more granular coordination at the workplace, school, and community levels. IMO that outermost layer of coordination really just needs to provide stability, with the more local layers coordinating the finer details. and for many of us, DST is perceived as disrupting that stability: it feels like more of a hindrance to coordination than an aid for it.

I know when school starts. Thats not my point. The DST want to force more light onto people when research is pretty clear we need less (although we need more sunlight, ironically)

Solution:

They wake up an hour earlier, go for a jog, have a cigarette outside, whatever, and then join the rest of society at our regularly scheduled time.

buy some dark out curtains, they work great and are relatively cheap. My bedroom can be dark as night in the middle of a sunny Texas day.

Some of us have jobs with inflexible hours.

True. And some even have extremely inconvenient hours changing many days a weak. Think of long distance pilots, hospital doctors, and many low paid service jobs. My wife has them and I can see the effects on her health. So I find it ridiculous that every year there are big articles about this one hour twice a year, while other have to damage their health many basically 11 months a year (assuming 4 weeks of consecutive vacation we at least get in here Europe)

I'm not sure that you can make that argument fairly. Shift, on-call, across-time-zones (etc) workers have a job with a recognized hazard which is fully known at the time of acceptance. If your wife did not want to deal with such a schedule then another career should have been chosen, and if she is suffering health effects now then there should be options for disability leave or transfer to a different set of responsibilities. If this is not available I would advocate for it -- but her suffering is not a reason to shift the time scale of the rest of society against their will and to their detriment. Let's do less harm to fewer people and not use some people being harmed to justify doing it to more of them.

Sure, and we should definitely reform those jobs as well. Part of why there's a shortage of medical professionals is due to the insistence on putting them through terrible hours.

That’s an incredibly out of touch, privileged reply.

My kid's school isn't so accommodating.

Correct, most can’t.

It still fucks my mind, my whole time feeling / inner clock gets messed up even thought it doesn't matter how late it is for me, just the knowledge of the current time that doesn't fit my inner calculation is bad, gives me a unwell feeling and feeds into my depression. It makes me feel out of touch with reality if that makes sense.

Honestly it was less intensive when I still had a regular job, the fixed daily structures that didn't fit my inner clock anyway kinda masked that issue.

Where I live, we are extremely privileged in this respect - being at the western edge of a timezone that stretches further than its "natural" length, we even get sunsets past 22 in June. And you know what, it rocks. I see no significant drawbacks. During much of the year it's dark when we go to work, so what? For most people work is in offices with artificial lighting, leisure time is when you need the sun. Some people also talk about problems for kids but mine (4 year old) has no discernable problems to get up (given regular routine enforcement) and he loves being in the playground until dinner time, for which evening sun helps.

The funny thing is that some people strongly advocate changing timezone to advance the clock 1 hour, saying that we are in the "wrong" one, it's not "natural", etc. But then you talk with them and many of them are confused about how it would work and think that the timezone change would give more evening sun in the winter. Explaining that it would do the opposite brings looks of terror.

Of course there is a minority of people who do support that change knowing the practical consequences, but it seems to be a rather small minority.

Whereabouts are you?

In the region of Galicia, northwestern Spain.

Meanwhile I'm on the eastern edge of a timzeone that arguably stretches further than its "natural" length. I remember moving here as a kid and being pissed off when it'd be dark at 16h.

I'd be all for us being permanent DST but as that's not allowed it'd be great if we could shift a timezone and stay standard time

I think your math is wrong on this. Advancing the clock one hour (e.g., by making DST permanent) would indeed give more evening sun in the winter.

My way of dealing with it is to get up before sunrise to maximize the daylight hours. Then it doesn't seem so bad to me.

For me standard (9-5) work hours are dometimrd the problem. I can't do the same leisure things in an hour before work vs an hour after work because I still in the first I will have to go to work after so no drinking, getting high or relaxing without a thought of "work" coming up soon. As long as I can work earlier and leave earlier i'm good though. We just need more flexible work schedules in general.

That’s the actual, correct time for sunset in your latitude.

Don’t like it? Move further south.

Don't like it? Uproot your life and family, potentially switch jobs, leave behind your friends, all so you can solve an artificially-created problem that I have arbitrarily decided is actual and correct!

With apologies to Douglas Adams… Time is an illusion. Sunset time doubly so.

We already pick arbitrary times for sunset twice a year. Nobody has to move anywhere to pick one arbitrary time for sunset and leave it that way. There’s nothing inherently “correct” about setting the time based on where the sun is positioned in the sky at “noon”, sometimes, from certain arbitrary points of observation.

Sunset isn't arbitrary, Its defined as the time the sun transitions below the horizon of your location. Its time varies based on where you are on earth and where the earth is in relation to the sun, but its not arbitrary.

That’s not what I said was arbitrary. The time we assign to it is arbitrary. It already is arbitrary, there isn’t any “correct” time of day to assign to it at any location. To the extent assigning a time at all serves a particular purpose, it’s a social purpose, and its assignment should be based on that.

… my darkest day is similar — sunset will be at 1611 — so this sounds like similar latitudes.

But … assuming lunch is at roughly noon or so, that's just barely past solar noon, not "the fading light of the late afternoon"…

lots of people have lunch at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and it does feel that way in the winter

Lunch in UK, 12 o’clock sharp!

Lunch in Spain 2pm-3pm

Back when I'd commute a long distance to work (in NYC), it was so demoralizing to be in a 4PM meeting, it be DARK outside, and know I still had the whole trip back.

Remote work has largely fixed that aspect for me at least.

I, in contrast, deeply and utterly despise getting up before dawn.

The 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.

> 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.

Yeah 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

> 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/10.1177/07487304198541...

More sources in these old comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691237

I think I'd have to see a survey of health professionals (including mental health) in the context of selecting a permanent DST or ST before I'd say "the scientific position is..."

How about the American Medical Association:

* https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-cal...

And the American College of Chest Physicians, American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, American Thoracic Society, etc:

* https://www.labmanager.com/new-position-statement-supports-p...

at this point I don't care which one they pick (fingers crossed for DST) but for the love of Dog pick one and stick to it.

It'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.

Still better than the UK where it gets dark hours before you finish work

But that's standard time, not DST. From what you say, what you want is permanent DST.

DT means daylight time in Australia (AEST = winter, AEDT = summer). So I’d want permanent AEDT.

Imho, it doesn't matter what the change is.. long as it is consistent.

So 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.

On 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.

I know right?

Get used to one set of hours, it changes. I personally find going into summer the worst, but I’d settle for one set of consistent hours instead of the arbitrarily-changing-roller-coaster we have now.

In Sweden it's dark when you go to work and dark when you go home. There are only a few hours of sun light in the winter.

Oh man, Novembers are the worst in Sweden. I lived in Malmö for about 10 years, and moved to London recently. London is heaven in terms of sunlight in comparison to Malmö and that says a lot.

In 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.

That 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.

I 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.

Every 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.

And, 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-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.

It sounds like you're welcoming standard time, and don't like DST. Opposite of the usual mistake.

Nope. 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.

The 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-dayl...

Folks, call your elected representatives. Otherwise this is pointless, semiannual complaining.

My elected representatives are too busy enriching themselves to do their jobs.

I 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)

Because 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.

I see. Thank you for the response

DST is annoying and stupid, but the article's theory is garbage. People aren't that fragile.

How else do you explain the rise in heart attacks correlating with it?

https://apnews.com/article/health-science-us-news-accidents-...

The 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.

> 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.

Daylight 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.

Daylight savings, at the cost of everything else.

My body remains on Standard Time all year, DST just messes me up. I can handle the earlier sunset just fine. Permanent DST? Please, no.

Benjamin 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.

Retuning to solar time is the solution. The railroads don’t need four fixed time zones for the entire country anymore.

“I’ll call you at noon tomorrow. In order for me to do that, please tell me your expected GPS coordinates.”

That's how it already works though, just less granular.

I 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.

Ill call you at 16:00 gmt.

Because the earth’s rotation is not actually consistent, GMT can be up to 16 minutes before or after the time when the sun crosses the meridian.

In regards to this aspect of timekeeping, AIUI the earth's rotation is nearly constant. The 16 minute difference is caused primarily by our orbit not being circular. (And to a degree, according to Wikipedia[1], the axial tilt.)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time

The point is to use local time for local things (store opening hours, school etc) and gmt for everything else.

“Siri, find and propose a time to meet with John, and automatically update my working hours as I change time zones.”

Done.

Any solution that involves everyone being required to bug their homes with an internet connected device or carrying a mobile is a terrible solution. Not everyone has or wants that type of device, and many don't even internet access.

A computer is only required for calculating the time in another state or zone. It doesn’t need to be connected to the Internet. But, if you want to call someone in another state, you already have a computing device handy. Even TVs carry powerful computers these days. Worst case, you have to consult a table.

I know you think this is a conspiracy to “bug” someone’s home by infecting it with the Internet. My wish for you is for a time machine to transport you to the century in which you belong.

With solar time, computer is required to calculate times for everyone. Roughly 20 mi east/west is 1 min in time. It means that people in the same metro area can have different local times. This isn't a problem for spontaneous phone calls but is a big problem for meetings.

My team works from home but is mostly in same metro area. One person is 10:01 in their time, another is 9:59 in their time. The time depends on who makes the meeting. What time do you use when go in to the office?

Not to be a one-upper but can I call you at around @875 (Swatch Internet Time, AKA .beat time) ?

Clocks are clocks, let's not try to pretend they're calendars.

Solar time is vastly less useful than just getting rid of time zones altogether in favor of Universal Time. If you're going to consider drastic measures, might as well just do that. Trying to plan a meeting? "Is 12:30 okay?" "I won't be up until 2." "How's 3:30 then?" Zero thinking about local / solar time or time zone math required.

Need to call someone without a pre-arranged time? "Hey Siri, is the sun up right now in Sydney, Australia?" Problem solved.

(Yes I know about the article that claims this would be bad, and I disagree with it.)

Agree, I should have put that in the range of possible solutions. That said, while people who understand geometry, geology, and science & math in general will find it best, the majority who do not would likely object...

One’s opinion of whether ST or DT is better depends a lot on where you live longitudinally in the time zone. People in Maine or Boston will have a different view from people in most of upper peninsula Michigan.

Of if one suffers from insomnia. Or is aware of the mounting research showing teenagers' development is getting destroyed by insufficient sleep

Yet Elementary schools typically start later in the day than High Schools do. That's the first thing that can change. https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/features/schools-start-too-early.h...

It’s changing. CA and a bunch of other states are mandating later school times.

> People in Maine or Boston will have a different view from people in most of upper peninsula Michigan.

After we get rid of the time change, states where standard time makes more sense could just change their time zone to the more appropriate choice. Time zones already follow state borders in a weird way anyway. The state legislature could just have the change come into place at the same time as the national change, so that locally it would be exactly the same as permanent standard time.

Two breaking changes at once is just cruel to the time zone programmers.

Two changes at once are perfect if it means we can skip dealing with the two time changes every single year from now on.

Na. the only real solution is the one we currently have.

Will 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.

I 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.

In 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.

Only 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.

What's the story with cancelling it in US? There was some plan to do it, but not sure how far it progressed.

Senate passed it. House didn’t even pick it up. It’s doing a second round now but I don’t think it’s serious.

Why wouldn't it be serious? I.e. is anyone really against it?

“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...

Because 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.

Yes. 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.

Many 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.

It 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.

Real 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.

I'll take an hour of sunlight after work, thanks.

Let'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.

DST is good. It provides variety, forces us to be flexible and helps with the amount of sunlight.

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