Daylight Saving Time Disrupts Humans' Natural Circadian Rhythm

I'm not sure whether your pics endorse a potential seriousness to DST or not. Or whether you think "normal" sleep patterns adjust?

You can gradually adjust your personal habits to provide for a seamless integration of forced changes in scheduling obligations....failure to do so may result in catastrophic consequences,,, or not...being retired, I have no dog in this fight...

Fortunate, indeed!

Travelling across time zones can wreak havoc with bowel movement, then?

I read the previous discussion Why DST? Very interesting stuff. I wish they would just get rid of Daylight Savings Time altogether. Spring ahead and fall back messes me up for at least a week twice a year. According to this Wikipedia article:

"Proponents of DST generally argue that it saves energy, promotes outdoor leisure activity in the evening, and is therefore good for physical and psychological health, reduces traffic accidents, reduces crime, or is good for business.

Opponents argue that actual energy savings are inconclusive, that DST can disrupt morning activities, and that the act of changing clocks twice a year is economically and socially disruptive and cancels out any benefit. "

To me a key paragraph/statement in the article is:

In a large survey, which examined the sleep patterns of 55,000 people in Central Europe, Roenneberg's group now shows that the timing of sleep on free days follows the seasonal progression of dawn under standard time, but not under DST.

The implication being that we might be disrupting full adjustment by resisting on weekends, thereby never really adjusting; unconsciously remaining in the confused state, biologically.

And the following paragraph:

In a second study, they analyzed the timing of sleep and activity for eight weeks around each of the two DST transitions in 50 people, taking into account each individual's natural clock preferences, or "chronotypes," ranging from morning larks to night owls. They found that the timing of both sleep and peak activity levels readily adjust to the release from DST in autumn, but that the timing of activity does not adjust to the start of DST in spring, especially in those who like to stay up late and sleep in.

...implies the same "natural" tendency for resisting the adaptation.

"They found that the timing of both sleep and peak activity levels readily adjust to the release from DST in autumn ..." et seq.

Get an extra hour's sleep at the autumnal change. Doesn't that suggest something?

Yes, a "natural" tendency to resist, I think.

Daylight saving time is a boon to the golf industry allowing duffers more time to play golf after work.

I read an article last Fall that showed the extended DST hours are actually counter-productive for the stated claim of saving energy. Households used more energy due to waking up in the dark and having to get kids to school, get ready for work, etc., than was saved by having more daylight in the evening, which just encouraged more evening activity.

It seems idiotic to me that we now spend a greater part of the year on faux time (DST) than on standard time.

I saw an article recently explaining why the US has a 'Presidents Day' legal holiday. Turns out, the snow-ski industry lobbied for a legal holiday to create a 3-day weekend during the peak of the ski season in mid-February.

Matter of opinion... Years ago we had 2 holidays in Feb. Lincolns (Feb 16th?) and Washingtons (Feb 23rd). Of course they were celebrated on the actual day of the week on which they occured. Somehow these got combined into "Presidents Day" and adjusted to always be on a monday... so we lost a holiday in the process. I personally would not like my birthday to be circulated around the month to make it a 3 day weekend.

I also can't see the snow ski industry "lobbying" to get this change, but if it happens, they wouldn't object.

Bill

I live in Arizona, where we can carry concealed weapons without a permit, and where we'll be damned if we let outsiders tell us what time it is.

We don't recognize DST around these parts.

Good for you! And we promise we'll stay off your lawn.

Don't worry. There are usually 6-8 kids playing on the lawn most of the time.

Just don't pee in my pool!

Very good Lyn

How about people who work in shifts their Circadian Rhythm must be going haywire?

I was wondering the same thing?

For the past year I have been doing mostly two 12 hour day shifts followed by two to four 12 hour night shifts then switching back for days again for the next week.

Do I even have circadian rhythms any more?

We already knew that your management epitomized the Peter Principle, but that really takes the cake.

As of last week I am no longer there so I can start getting back to somewhat normal sleep patterns again.

If you are curious. Walkout at work last week.

Me think you can not disrupt anything that is not there! Always hear complaints from people that overdo it on the weekends but the same people probably complaining about DST.

Ever noticed that when you go camping that time does not matter and when it gets dark it feels like its time to go to bed? Similarly if the sun is up you wake up, regardless what time you usually would get up. I like sleeping in, but its impossible during camping.

All that said DST seems to have merrits but we could also live without it.

I love the times when I can get back to my natural Circadian Rhythm during camping, but the live most of us have is disrupted by the things society provides us with. I guess television is one of the things that keep a lot of people awake and Internt!

Ok post over - off to bed!

For a few years I was on the following schedule:

Alternating between two different schedules, switching every 3 months.

-3 months 'normal' daytime work hours based on a 24 hour day and that adhere to DST.

-3 months work and watch based on an 18 hour day (i.e. wake at 6 am, then wake at midnight, next wake at 6 pm, next wake at noon, then back to 6am).

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Either schedule works fine. There were no significant clues about sunrise or sunset, so that may have made the schedule based on an 18 hour day more easy to adapt to.

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The problem was changing between schedules. Once you were 'on' either schedule, things were just fine, but the adjustment period was about a week and a half to two weeks. That adjustment period didn't seem to decrease with experience either.

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I think humans are readily adaptable to many regular schedules. I think the shift in schedules can be a bigger problem than a non-standard schedule.

The future generations will laugh up on us for doing DST, until another dork convinces a ruler (with biased studies) of the benefits of an even more ridiculous practice, who knows:

Maybe hunting your own food or banning all meat consumption, sending your kids to school at age 6 mo. making engineering mandatory for girls, giving husbands the legal status of "pregnant" whenever their wives are, retiring at age 100, grant animals the right to vote, choose and practice a religion at 5 (as a behavioral control), have at least one homosexual per family (to encourage simpathy towards the "gender"), enlist the electrical service army (to pedal a generator 2000 Hr. for the comunity), drink your own piss and guess what else.

My CIRCAdian cycle is clearly synced by dawn. About one month before DST onset I start waking up one hour earlier (about 5% of a day). What we call "normal" time is centered on an astronomical event (noon) which has little to do with human dark /light sensors. It takes me some days to switch back to std from DST. DST is closer to my "internal bio clock".

That sounds more like a mind-body connection, to me -- anticipation. Daylight doesn't change in anticipation of the DST event. It is only the relative correlation to a clock display that changes. Light is considered the main synchronizing influence on our internal clock(s).

"Daylight doesn't change in anticipation of the DST event."

not sure about what you mean by anticipation here.

On Sept. 1st. sunrise is at 6:40. Still a decent time for a soft wake-up call from my internal clock to begin.

On Oct. 1st., sunrise at about 6:00. That's too early! And it's around 5:40 on Oct. 20, then DST switches it back to 6:40, the same as on Sept. 1st.

The curves for sunrise / sunset are asymetric. Maybe what I feel here on spring begin is closer to what you feel at the end of summer on the northern hemisphere.

So what your saying, if I understand, is that your body (and brain/mind is part of the body) is trying to correct for the artificial change in time? You imply you are in the southern hemisphere and that DST in the spring is like our DST ending in the Fall.

I think we both agree the light cycle is what it is, and it's representation on a clock display is relative and assigned by us. What other cue other than thinking about it -- anticipating it (the artificial change) would cause a change of an hour in waking up, from any one day, to the next?

If you are only being synch'd by the light cycle, why such an abrupt change on any day? Sunrise never leaps by an hour from any day to the next? I'm just saying why would you always have an hour's change in when you awake, only a month before DST change and no other month?

Maybe we're each talking about different things here. I'm not trying to be difficult. Please correct me.

(As a side note, I like to sleep in a very dark room, so I have minimized the light of sunrise in my bedroom. (That just got me to search for info. relating to that and I found this interesting article, which could open up a whole other subject of the effect of light on health; see John Ott.) This may have altered my sleep patterns to not be the same as most people around me. But then I also prefer to stay up later than most people and get up later, anyhow.)

Hi Passerby,

It's not a change of an hour from a day to the next. It takes some 7 weeks from sunrise at 6:40 to sunrise at 5:40, so for about one month I'm awake around one hour too early (my alarm clock is set to 7:10). My room is not totally dark and there are noises - mostly birds, dogs are synced to human / traffic noise... You see, we have opposite sleep patterns. Thanks for the link!

So when the clock is set +1 hour it comes closer to my "internal" clock.

The rate of change of sunrise time (minutes per day) is bigger at spring begin down here. If I remeber correctly the rate of change is larger at autumn begin on the northern hemisphere. This could make a difference, too.

Thanks for the explanation.

I must be one of the few that really like DST. I got to hate standard time when the sun goes down before I finished work in the winter months. You go to work in the dark and return in the dark. Kids go to school and get home from school in the dark. Our company would do outdoor field work but were severely restricted due to limited light. In the summer, the sun would be up far too early. It is the sun that dictates my waking hour. By springing forward, although superficially imposed, the time is at least one hour ahead. More daylight in the evening makes more sense. It is also a protection from a syndrome called seasonal affected disorder ( SAD ) based on mostly limited light. I vote for DST all year long, it keeps me from being SAD.

I think your post relates somewhat to what Snel is saying. Many people do like having the extra daylight for activities; i.e., all the bumper stickers of "I'd rather be..." But no matter what we do with time in a relative and artificial sense (how we agree on a unified representation of it), the body still tries to synchronize using light as a cue. This, we ignore, with consequences.

Until the industrial revolution, we, as a nation, were much more on a "natural" work schedule. The reason you and many others find the extra light desirable/helpful, is that our daily schedule of work is not closely tied to day length -- otherwise, we would make our work days have a sliding period on a clock such that the work day starts X hours after sunrise and ends X hours before sunset. (And we could easily construct a time-clock set up that way. Imagine a work place clock that had no numbers, just a shaded region that followed a day length schedule. And what if all business had to be scheduled in that region?) It would, also, make for shorter work days in fall/winter months. (Geez, if we allow weekends, why not go a little further?) Since we don't, work impinges on our desire to do activities other than work, that often require daylight for enjoyment. I imagine a change like this, alone, might help worker attitudes and thereby productivity (??!!). It could also, possibly, lead to a more relaxed attitude about work, so that we weren't so anal about being a few minutes late. We have become driven by "productivity." Another outcome might be that few businesses would operate in more northern or southern latitudes. That's probably true anyway.

Farm work probably doesn't pay much attention to DST changes. Why should it? Our partners (plants) are ruled by sunrise and sunset -- no DST for them (except for those dang combines that have headlights!).

I wasn't intending to add this next few sentences of rant, but thinking about this post has leads me to. I think we have done wonders to screw with our health and quality of life, by altering as much of Nature as we possibly can; much, apparently, just because we can. (Do we have tablets of stone stating these rules? Oh, I forgot. We were "asked" to "subdue" the Earth. Why my innermost self doesn't resonate with that is a good question, right? A la Flip Wilson, I guess the Devil's making me feel that way. ) Just to name a few of these alterations, off the top of my head... the aforementioned definition of a work day and how artificial light (funny that we consciously and willing define it as such) has allowed for it, processing the hell out of food substances until they have little nutritive value, and are in fact harmful, introducing a lot of non-naturally occurring substances into our living spaces, and polluting water and food sources, altering landscapes quite drastically to suit the whims (??) of society/culture, deciding we truly understand how to "engineer" organisms... and so on.

I think a major reason that so many people do like camping is that 1) there is no artificial work schedule to interfere with what we do each day; we like letting the sun dictate our activities Hiking is a very popular activity when camping. It is not productive as normally defined. (we'll, generally, enjoy the night sky more often, too), 2) possibly "negative" ions [I know; grain of salt] from trees and large bodies of water, 3) the air, though polluted almost everywhere, will still feel fresher because of the number of trees in most camping places, 4) precisely, to get away from the "other" world we have created, 5) and beyond... add your own. (I can't help referencing one of John Denver's songs I've always liked -- "I Guess He'd Rather Be In Colorado." And that sentiment could be said about so many places that have been left untouched by man. To my way of thinking, anyone who doesn't feel a sort of "ache" to be in these settings, and feel a connection to them, really needs them.

But, the mind being active as it is, wants to, now, trump the primeval biology we've inherited. Our brains have duped us into foolishly believing we can and not suffer for it. We may be a knowledgeable species, but wise? I don't think so. Well, maybe an inkling ember is still left. Most of us do enjoy being in Nature. It's a clue... and maybe a cue, if we listen.

Humans have been engineering themselves since we discovered clothes. Or was it the fig leaf? Of course for Eve, it would be changed for every other leaf in the shop; maple, Oak, ash, etc. I doubt very much that the earth could hold 7 billion people without raising productivity in all our activities. Certainly, our ability to grow sufficient nutritious food hinges greatly on our engineering abilities. Even the lost tribes in New Guinea discard their traditions for a more state run life. Because they live to be 80 years old instead of the 40 years they can muster from living in the wilds of nature. The use of time by changing to daylight saving time is just another tool to increase human productivity. Once we fail to be productive, our numbers will decline and we will plateau at some level. Who gets to chose? Perhaps we should view engineering and science as our tools of foraging and hunting. Humans are a part of the landscape and we have the ability to make it conform. It is not our fault that nature can't keep up. It may bite us in the end but we humans will push the limits and that is no different than any other animal. Malthusian limits restrict growth and mother nature will tell us/animals in one way or the other.

So be it... or Que Sera Sera.

'...Humans have been engineering themselves since we discovered clothes....'

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*snicker snicker snicker....