Via Washington Examiner
Moving the clock ahead one hour this weekend for daylight saving time is saving energy for the conservation fight, but it’s also leading to more depression and heart attacks, making it hazardous to your health.
A magazine published by Duke Energy, one of the largest electric utilities in the country, included an article this week that took aim at the clock-changing law, which was updated just over a decade ago by a 2005 energy bill. It pointed out a number of adverse health effects that are a side effect of using 0.5 percent less energy per day as a result of gaining an hour of sunlight.
The practice has ebbed and flowed over the last 50 years, but most states in the U.S. adopted the practice after the policy was updated by Congress. Included in that adoption was Vice President Mike Pence‘s home state of Indiana, which had been an outlier for years.
The Duke Energy “Illumination” article said Energy Department data showed Indiana actually increased its energy use by 1 percent after the daylight saving time adoption, forcing residents to spend millions of dollars more per year.
But energy use is not the only thing affected by the time change. Studies published over the last decade on the effects of daylight saving time have shown it interferes with natural sleep patterns, which people never truly recover from.
Studies “have found that the time change interrupts sleep cycles, causing fatigue, lack of productivity and sadness,” the article added. Even worse, medical studies showed that daylight saving time also can lead to death. “Other studies show that the number of heart attacks spikes in the days following the March time change, and after the November time change, the frequency of heart attacks decreases,” the article reads.
It is referring to a 2013 study in the American Journal of Cardiology that showed a small spike in heart attacks on the Sunday following the March time change.
A University of Alabama study done in 2012 showed a 10 percent jump in heart attacks on the Monday and Tuesday following the time change in March.
The Duke Energy article doesn’t offer much in the way of policy suggestions. “Whether you like it or hate it, it’s likely here to stay.”
Researchers have known this for years. Ambulance sirens and police sirens all racing to the heart attack and car crash scenes in the first few days of the time change. Search and Rescue team call outs for despondent individuals are also up in that first week as well.
It’s no coincidence!! Ah shit there goes my pager!! Gotta GO!!
Get rid of your clock. Problem solved.
This is such bullshit. If a lousy one hour time difference was unhealthy, then travelling internationally would be suicidal.
It is not just a 1 hour change per se. This is essentially a daily change which can take quite a while to adjust to. I get up at 5AM regularly, now I will be getting up at 4 AM EVERY DAY–after a few weeks of getting up an hour earlier than usual, most people will be dragging a little.
The article seems like common sense to me. Like people who have decreased vitamin D in the winter getting seasonal blues, people who work in offices have higher rates of depression and suicide than those working outside, married men live longer by a significant margin and increased crime at the full moon.
We can argue causality, but some things are just facts whether they appear logical to the modern mind or not.
I just read that one of Hillery’s campaign promises was to get rid of daylight savings time, had I known that before the election I would of voted for her.
I wish they’d at least do it on Saturday instead of Sunday so you would have more than one day to adjust before returning to the work world.
Not sure if it’s daylight saving time ,God , Satan or sin but something is trying to kill me.Pain and my awareness of death are now constant companions in my brain.
Maybe a little repentance is in order, BB
“I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
– Genesis 12:1-3
Move to Arizona, the only State that doesn’t use Daylight Saving Time….
Dont forget Hawaii.
The ice cream man says make it permanent-keep those kids outside on summer evenings till 9pm.
On a serious note,I have often wondered how much more energy is consumed because of the sun setting later(according to the clock)-the sooner it gets dark,the less energy air conditioners use,which are the biggest users of energy.
AC ain’t the biggest energy drain up here (MN). Maybe in July.
I’ve never recovered from DST.
Who remembers Nixon restarting daylight savings time during winter? That was weird. Going to school in the pitch dark. Felt like Fairbanks, AK. Didn’t last long.
No, I’m pretty sure that it’s having to work for a living that “interrupts sleep cycles, causing fatigue, lack of productivity and sadness.”
someone, somehow, is making money off of it…..
When I’m eatin cat food in my tent, DST aint gonna matter.
OMG! The sun rises, the sun sets! You wake up, you go to bed! You go to work, you come home!
Come on people…get a grip! Quit letting a man-made contraption dictate how you feel. You decide how you feel…don’t let a government action decide for you!
I’m against daylight savings time.
We are coming on to spring and summer, and I am afraid that the extra hour of sunshine every evening is going to burn up my crops.
(Yes, of course I am joking…)