Daylight Savings Time: That Extra Hour isn't Helping Anyone

Circadian rhythms operate in living organisms to give structure to their daily activities as well as to neurologically prepare them for whatever the body needs to be more apt at that point in the day. Many functions and biosynthetic pathways of the body rely on these clocks to be optimized for their respective tasks. For instance, the body produces higher levels of melatonin as it anticipates the sun setting and prepares itself for sleep. Human beings, however, are one of the few species capable of entirely and intentionally disrupting these circadian rhythms in favor of non-cyclic behaviors.

Sam Baker of Kera News writes about one of these atypical behaviors in “How That Extra Hour In Daylight Saving Time Can Disrupt Our Body Clocks and Our Health”. He discusses a bill in Texas state legislature that would exempt the state from shifting its clocks for daylight savings time. The idea originated back in the days of the post-american revolution in the mind of founding father, Benjamin Franklin as a means to most productively utilize daylight hours available. Since then however most of the United States has transitioned away from an Agrarian economy and doesn’t benefit from the artificial structure. Baker interviewed Dr. Joseph Takahashi who had said that all people would benefit from living in standardized time. The Spring DST pushes us forward the extra hour away from standard time and ends up, according to Takahashi, being far more destructive to our normal sleep and circadian rhythms. People tend to wake up a few minutes later each day resulting in days that are over 24 hours long. Enforcing the hour shift away from standard time reduces our alignment with the natural cycle of the night and day to the point where there are often more accidents and drops in productivity associated with the proceeding weeks.

Another point the article brings up is that of the increased risk of cancers associated with different time zones during DST. The West coasts of all countries that employ DST in a continuous manner have higher rates of cancer than that of the Eastern sides when considering the appropriate factors. Despite the fact that daylight savings time is a construct created centuries ago, it has had profound effects on human health. This is an excellent point to compare to a lecture done by Dr. Daniel Cavanaugh on sleep and circadian rhythms. According to his research on Drosophila, chronic circadian misalignment leads to decreased lifespan due to accumulations of various mutations. Specifically, the flies he worked with were subjected to CCM conditions which increased the day-span of the flies to 28 hours. This constant condition lead to the decrease in lipid metabolism in affected individuals which then caused the aforementioned accumulation of age-related defects.

While his research has yet to have been concluded (his lab intends to follow up on the relationship between the lipid metabolism and subsequent issues) it does relate heavily to the problems with shifts in circadian clocks brought up in Baker’s article. The decreases in lifespan as well as the correlated effects on health are brought up as concerns for both authors. Dr. Cavanaugh’s research serves as preliminary analysis of the reason behind many of the deficiencies in those with shifting circadian rhythms. However, the Kera article does focus more a smaller shift in term- 1 hour for DST versus 4 hours for CCM as well as the fact that the 1 hour shift remains consistent while the 4 hours for CCM is constantly progressing (8AM becomes 12PM becomes 4PM, etc.). These differences make it so that the research done at Loyola isn’t necessarily a direct comparison for the effects caused by daylight savings times shifts forward or back.

Overall, daylight savings time being an artificial concept that structures our days in a manner not conducive toward regular circadian clocks undeniably makes it a contentious topic. It disrupts our biosynthetic pathways cycles and ultimately prevents us from having a “normal” day. Feeling out of it when either shift for DST isn’t unusual as it causes a shift from the patterns we spent the last six months growing accustomed to. These have adverse effects on our health, as pointed out by Dr. Takahashi and Dr. Cavanaugh’s research. The bill has still yet to pass through Texas’ legislature, though expect to see similar resolutions emerge as the benefits of such a change are further explored.

Baker, Sam. “How That Extra Hour In Daylight Saving Time Can Disrupt Our Body Clocks and Our Health.” KERA News, NPR, 15 Apr. 2019, www.keranews.org/post/how-extra-hour-daylight-saving-time-can-disrupt-our-body-clocks-and-our-health