Sunday morning, I could feel the reason why Bill Meyer (the Bill Meyer Show, 6:00-9:00 AM weekdays,1440 KMED Medford, KMED.com) had been telling us about “federally induced heart attack day” on Friday. When my younger daughter woke me to drive her to work at 3:30 AM that was suddenly 4:30 AM, my heart raced and my blood pressure spiked; I had to sit for several minutes and let the hot flash subside. I had forgotten that the time change comes two weeks earlier than it used to.
Bill was telling us about a Swedish study that found that heart attacks increase about 10% on the Monday after we “spring forward” in the spring, and a similar decrease after we “fall back.” Newsmax Health tells us that a 2012 study in two Michigan hospitals over 6 years showed a whopping 55% increase in heart attacks on the Sunday after the spring changeover. Web MD looked at the Swedish study and said that the number of heart attacks rose 5% for the three days after the spring time change, and more for women than for men.
It’s time to end this nonsense. It doesn’t save daylight; nothing can. It merely shifts our schedules an hour earlier so the sun stays up later by the clock. This is supposed to save energy that we would otherwise spend lighting our homes, but I doubt that, because it makes people stay up later than they would otherwise, watching TV and other entertainments, like sports and outdoor concerts.
It is hard to go to sleep when it is light outside, and DST deprives us of more sleep than we would otherwise lose to summer’s long days. This affects middle latitudes more than others, as people in the far north, like Alaska and Sweden, use heavy curtains and even foil on their windows to allow them to sleep with midnight sun, and southern latitudes have naturally shorter summer days. This might allow for some of the differences between the Michigan and Swedish studies, Michigan being in the middle.
DST is said to increase retail sales and sports viewing. But it thereby costs us in health and productivity. The second greatest cost shown in the SleepBetter.org study was cyber-surfing while on the clock, probably because it is hard to concentrate on work when one is short on sleep.
My daughter says that DST has to stop. She is trying to get her young son on a regular schedule, and a sudden change of an hour doesn’t help one bit. Nor will it help her get her sleep when the new baby comes. Mothers of children going to school face a similar problem.
DST was started during WWI to save energy. Since we didn’t have TV then, it may well have done so. It has continued because it benefits retailers and entertainers in our consumer-oriented economy. But we Baby Boomers are aging, and we need our sleep. I would like to be able to watch fireworks again, but they go on too late for me these days, since they must wait on darkness.
