The Hidden Health Costs of Daylight Saving Time and Exactly How to Ove – Symphony Natural Health

The Hidden Impact of Daylight Saving Time (DST)

Each year, we adjust our clocks twice to get more daylight in the evening: once in the spring (“spring forward,” or Daylight Saving Time, DST) and once in the fall (“fall back,” Standard Time). While these shifts may have made sense a hundred years ago, we now know that altering our natural rhythms can be unhealthy, if not dangerous, to our health. This shift interferes with our sleep, mental clarity and even our social behaviors [2].

Well-known researchers in the area of circadian rhythm, like Satchin Panda, PhD, author of The Circadian Code book, would suggest that we need to prepare ahead of time to deal with the time shift. Creating a ritual days before the time change, ensuring an earlier wake-up time and adequate light in the morning as well as more dim light and an earlier dinner, would be part of his strategy to find alignment with the new time.

Research from Matthew Walker, PhD, a sleep scientist and professor of neuroscience at University of California at Berkeley, showed that “when people lose one hour of sleep, there’s a clear hit on our innate human kindness and our motivation to help other people in need.” [3]

In fact, the personal health effects may be so drastic that in 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine published a position statement advocating for the abolishment of DST due to its effects on health [4].

Beyond health, DST disrupts global communication since not all countries follow DST. Plus, there’s evidence that DST has a negative economic impact by reducing productivity and performance. Even farmers, who have often been falsely associated with the implementation of DST, are one of the strongest lobby groups opposing DST–particularly dairy farmers since the milking patterns of their cows don’t change when we shift the clocks. [5, 6, 7].