#im tired and I accidentally closed some incognito tabs OK?

[cognitiveinequality]

Your Push For Permanent DST Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad.

(NOTE: this is a long post and I am not putting it under the cut because I am feeling particularly bitchy tonight and so pls feel free to just hit “J” on desktop to skip past this if you’re not in the mood, but I would very much like this on the record. Ahem.)

If you are one of those people who advocates for "year round DST" I need you to take several seats while I explain to you why you are completely wrong to please reconsider.

Oh, you don't like losing an hour of sleep? BITCH, ME EITHER. But the answer is NOT a shift forward an hour all year, and here's why:

1) It "saves" literally nothing:

Don't be fooled by the term "Daylight Saving". Most of us associate DST with long days of summer, and "who wouldn't want that???!" we ask ourselves, as we scowl at the clock and chug coffee to wake us up every morning for weeks after losing an hour. But you and I both know permanent DST won't magically create sunlight, no matter what doublespeak politicians use to win votes. I understand that "keeping it this way all year!!!1" is a lot more attractive when you’re sleep-deprived and when the days are already getting longer. And isn’t it funny how that’s exactly when the loudest advocates always seem to crop up to sell this terribad idea... I wonder why that is...? 🤔

Did you know that the biggest industries pushing for year round DST are recreational outdoor sports like golfing? They think that an extra hour of daylight in exchange for one less hour of morning light is more likely to put money in their pockets. No matter what politicians like Marco Rubio tell you, the push for year round DST is not about a better quality of life, it's about the bottom line of their corporate lobbyists.

And get this: American politicians have already had their chance at this and it blew up in their faces. If you're younger than 50, you probably didn't know that the U.S. already TRIED year-round Daylight Saving Time. 

During the OPEC crisis of the 70s, the Nixon government passed a "temporary, year-round DST" that started Jan 6 1974. The idea was that it would "save energy" — with the NYT citing "experts" at the Federal Energy Office who anticipated "a national saving of 100,000 to 150,000 barrels of oil a day."  Do you know what happened? People quickly figured out it was all baloney - a Department of Transportation study at the time concluded that the change actually had minimal impact on saving energy and might have actually increased gasoline consumption.

People in 1974 immediately figured out the change wasn't a good one, and it showed in polling. There were a multitude of articles and opinion pieces through that winter calling for an early end to the 16 month experiment with much of the concern focused on the fact that longer, darker mornings meant parents were suddenly sending their kids to school in the pitch dark for months on end. And the parents probably weren't exactly relishing their morning commutes, either, because....

2) It's bad for your brain:

Sun in the day and darkness at night are the main signals that adjust the timing of our body clock, and our bodies use light cues to regulate a TON of internal processes, from hormones to heart rate.  And one of the things that science is still trying to fully understand is its heavy influence on mood.  

I'm no doctor/researcher, but from my reading the basics seem to be: Light stimulates your hypothalamus - the brain's main regulator of a ton of important functions, including the production of hormones linked with circadian rhythms and mood. This means that the timing of your exposure to daylight — usually 100 to 1000 times brighter than indoor light — can make a significant difference in how your brain functions. 

There's a school of thought among researchers studying Seasonal Affective Disorder who believe that SAD patients are actually experiencing a "phase-delay" of their circadian rhythm that throws their brains out of sync with their regular schedule and contributes to depression, partly because of the timing of melatonin secretion. Studies have shown that early morning light exposure is critical to those people — it’s theorized that the light tells those brains to "speed up" their circadian rhythm to match the clock.

Other SAD studies have looked at the role of serotonin, dopamine, and other hormones stimulated by light levels, and while no one has quite cracked the code on their complex relationship to the disorder, there are consistent, repeatable results that show that light therapy is one of the most effective treatments for seasonal depression. But — and this is the important part, for our purposes — the light has got to be morning light. More, brighter light in the middle or at the end of the day does virtually nothing to alleviate SAD symptoms.  

But don't take it from me - let's hear from the fine folks of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, from their position statement on permanent DST:

DST is less well-aligned with intrinsic human circadian physiology, and it disrupts the natural seasonal adjustment of the human clock due to the effect of late-evening light on the circadian rhythm. DST results in more darkness in the morning hours, and more light in the evening hours. Both early morning darkness and light in the evening have a similar effect on circadian phase, causing the endogenous rhythm to shift to later in the day. There is evidence that the body clock does not adjust to DST even after several months. Permanent DST could therefore result in permanent phase delay, a condition that can also lead to a perpetual discrepancy between the innate biological clock and the extrinsic environmental clock, as well as chronic sleep loss due to early morning social demands that truncate the opportunity to sleep.

(hmm... "phase-delay".. where have I heard that term before?? 🤔🤔🤔)

3) You might not like it as much as you think you will.

Like I said at the start, the association with long summer days holds great appeal for most - me included!! And we've already covered how less morning light will likely cause serious mental wellness issues for many.  But maybe you think "ehh... maybe Minnesotans and Alaskans have to worry, but we'll probably be OK where we are...."

Know this: If a shift to permanent DST was enacted across the U.S., those in most states north of the Oklahoma panhandle would would not see sun until after 8 a.m. from late November until the middle of February — already super fun — but the real chaos begins when you realize that the sun rises even later the further west within your time zone you go.

Switching the clocks ahead an hour in the winter means someone in Boston might see the sun around 8:00 am during the darkest parts of winter — already kind of sucky — but if you're in, say, Louisville, KY (right on the western edge of the Eastern Time zone) even though you're hundreds of miles further south, don't expect to see the sun rise in December/January until nearly 9:00am. 

For months. 

Fun! 

(And not for nothing, but multiple studies have found that the further west people live within a time zone, the more health problems they may experience and the shorter they live on average.  With some theorizing that these outcomes have links to the greater disconnect in circadian rhythms caused by the misalignment of ‘body’ time to ‘clock’ time. Neat!)

So is there any answer? I hate messing with my body clock twice a year!

Bitch, me too! And once again, I will turn to the pros at the AASM:

It is the position of the AASM that the U.S. should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of a national, fixed, year-round time. Current evidence best supports the adoption of year-round standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology and provides distinct benefits for public health and safety.

(emphasis mine)

Like the pros at the AASM above say, just keep the clocks on standard time.

Sure, we'll get a little bit less evening light in the summer, but that just means fireworks and sparklers can start earlier, fireflies will be visible sooner, and patio lanterns can glow a little brighter — a small tradeoff for millions being less likely to stick their head in the oven or drink themselves to death from seasonal depression.