Permanent Daylight Savings Time May Not Be a Good Idea
DANVILLE – Maybe we don’t want to have permanent Daylight Savings Time.
Dr. Anne Marie Morse is a board-certified and fellowship-trained pediatric neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Geisinger says, if we go to permanent ‘Daylight Saving Time,’ “Some parts of this country won’t see sunrise until 9:30 a.m. The reason why this fails is many times parents have significant concerns about their kids going to school in the dark, we see an increase in motor vehicle accidents, especially in our teenagers who are even more sleep-deprived.”
She says that’s one of other reasons why the idea of permanent Daylight Savings Time might not be ideal. She says this is the fifth time in history a country has tried to change Daylight Saving Time, and each time it failed ‘horribly’ – that includes the U.S. having already tried it twice.
She says the biggest issue is a misalignment with our body’s day/night rhythm, “Every single cell in our body has what we call a ‘clock gene,’ which is the circadian rhythm gene, meaning that’s how our body knows when its day or night. So when we put our bodies into a timeframe that is not accompanying what they should be expecting, we see all types of havoc.”
Dr. Morse says other major health problems can occur as a result of this as well.
If the Sunshine Protection Act is passed, the best thing we can do to help ourselves is examine how you sleep, “So making sure you’re having a regular bedtime close to seven days a week and really trying to maintain those age-appropriate number of hours of sleep and it’s a good quality of sleep. Those are steps you can take toward protecting yourself some if this does become permanent.”
Dr. Morse says if passed, states do have the autonomy to adapt its own standard time irrespective of the legislation. Hear more of her comments on the WKOK.com Podcast Page or wherever you listen to podcasts.
