OPINION: Year-round daylight saving time could exacerbate emotional disorders, obesity, heart attacks, diabetes and other ailments. Problems would be especially acute in northern states, columnist pmorici1 writes.
On the second Sunday in March, Americans push their clocks forward, and the disruption to sleep patterns creates fatigue and a lot of irritable personalities.
Changing the clocks As a nation of workaholics, we aren’t bothered as much by getting an extra hour of sleep in November. However, polls show about two-thirds of Americans would like the biannual tinkering to stop and most of those prefer year-round DST. At first, railroads published timetables calibrated to noon at their company’s headquarters and left it to communities along their lines to transpose into local time. Eventually, they adopted a more-or-less unified system of time zones of peculiar formation—the western border of the Eastern Time Zone ran through the major stations in Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Charleston and Atlanta.
Impact on bodies and minds The impacts on our bodies has been endlessly studied by psychologists and physicians, and cursed the morning after DST commences by a sleep deprived public who generally want it made permanent. A recently passed Senate bill would implement year-round DST but addresses the above-mentioned issues by permitting states to opt-out—to go on standard time year round. Time zones borders already split states and all that is missing is to let states redraw those borders in adopting standard or daylight-saving time.
For about 25 years, when my wife taught in Fairfax County, her first classes began at 7:20 a.m. The kids with long bus rides were up too early, no matter the clock.
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