Science & Technology
The organisation isn't the first group of scientists to rage against the tradition. Indeed, a growing number of studies over the years have found that the time shift can have modest but real negative effects on everything from sleep quality to the risk of heart attack and stroke. Just this January, for instance, a study found that the first week of daylight saving time in the spring was associated with a greater number of fatal car crashes; it also estimated that getting rid of it would have prevented more than 600 deadly accidents over a 22-year span.
"An abundance of accumulated evidence indicates that the acute transition from standard time to daylight saving time incurs significant public health and safety risks, including increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events, mood disorders, and motor vehicle crashes," the AASM notes in its statement, published Wednesday in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, which is run by the AASM.
It's the transition that's the major headache for us. But in an ideal world, it's standard time, the period of the year that stretches from winter to spring, that would stay enshrined as the permanent time year round, according to the AASM. That's because the extra hour that daylight saving takes from the morning and gives to the evening is more likely to throw off our carefully balanced body clock, or circadian rhythm, causing a sort of mini-jet lag, the AASM argues.
There has been steady but slow progress in striking down daylight saving time in the U.S., with lawmakers in at least 32 states having introduced legislation to abolish it this year. But the few states that have progressed the furthest, such as Oregon and California, are still lagging behind on making it reality, and it's likely that it would take federal action on the part of Congress for the practice to be widely eliminated (Hawaii is the only state to have no daylight saving time at all, while much of Arizona doesn't recognise it).
According to a representative for the AASM, the organisation has made the elimination part of its legislative agenda for 2020, so they'll be pushing for such federal action to be taken. Other medical organisations that have endorsed the AASM's position on daylight savings time include the American Academy of Cardiovascular Sleep Medicine, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the Society of Anesthesia and Sleep Medicine.
Reader Comments
Since day one, what they should have done and still should do, kick DST on in Summer and leave it on forever.You are correct. But if I've ever seen a time when the archons are in control (so they believe), it's right now. The archons are all about stress, emotion, worry, fear ... they feed off it. And the god-forsaken daylight savings bs is one wonderful method of upping it all... good reminder of your slavehood, not as good as the useless masks (proven useless by many many real studies...viruses are measured in angstroms).
Been saying that my whole life, too.
R.C.
Why not just let it be, we as humanity, have an internal clock, that determines. The cycle of sleep and awake and how it affects the melatonin production in the brain, also "Schumann Resonance". I think of it as the heartbeat of the earth. This is dependent of where we live on the earth surface.
We are no longer able to feel this resonance, we live in the age of technology, where all the natural waves of nature are suppressed, just my thoughts.
I'm pretty sure I remember all the discussions and upset folks when it was being voted into law. I think I was maybe in early teens or thereabouts. I wasn't particularly aware of the politics and never did quite make sense of the arguments for it. Something about it would save power (electric) and give people more time at home. I never could find a logical reason that might be true.
Anyway, as I aged I noticed changing time twice a year didn't give people more time or offer power savings - or have any other benefit I could think of. I did notice what a stress it put on people individually and as a society.
Passing into middle years, I spent several years working rotating night/day shifts, and having a schedule that shifted erratically with no predictability. It became viscerally clear to me that screwing around with people's wake/sleep cycles and routines took a serious toll on the body and mind (and spirit). And the pieces came together that DST was never about any proposed benefit, but another method of controlling and disrupting the population.
Try working shift work. What a bunch of babies.
Been saying that my whole life, too.
R.C.