[Survey] Should We Get Rid of Daylight Savings Time?
We just turned the clocks forward…and hit the snooze button a dozen times. Are you tired of “springing forward”? Take the survey and let us know if you think it has any benefit or not!
It’s a least-favorite time of year for many Americans. That time when the clocks flip forward (or back), disrupting all of our sleep patterns and leaving us sleepy and grumpy for the next week.
Daylight Savings Time as originally intended as a fuel-saving measure during World War 1. But many now feel that the time change is outdated, and has no measurable benefit. In fact, with the advent of air conditioning, some studies show that it may actually increase energy consumption!
Apparently, the time change really does nothing to increase our sustainability as a nation, it doesn’t provide any significant energy savings, and of course it’s highly inconvenient for many of us.
AND, new studies are now showing that this abrupt and disruptive change to our circadian rhythms may even be harming our health!
The latest is a study described in STAT which suggests that switching to Daylight Saving Time can kill you.
A 2013 study of nearly 1,000 patients at two Michigan hospitals compared admissions for heart attacks during the seven days after the move to daylight saving to the same days two weeks prior. In the study, which looked at data between 2006 and 2012, researchers found 17 percent more heart attacks after “springing ahead,” with a 71 percent spike on the first day, Sunday. In fact, that one day accounted for almost all of the overall increase.
It’s not just heart attacks either.
Analyzing a decade worth of strokes in Finland, scientists found a brief spike in the incidence of ischemic stroke (the most common kind, caused by a clot blocking blood flow in the brain) after the clocks are turned ahead compared to the week before. The rate was 8 percent higher during the first two days after setting the clocks ahead, Dr. Jori Ruuskanen of Finland’s University of Turku and colleagues reported. But in people over 65, the incidence of stroke on those Sundays and Mondays was 20 percent higher.
What do you think? Is it time to scrap Daylight Savings Time? Learn more, and take the survey at TreeHugger.com.
