Why daylight saving time affects your bodyĭST’s hour shift disrupts our social clock, which dictates when we go to work, school, and hang out with friends. If you live somewhere that makes the DST shift, here’s what to know about how it may affect your body clock and what it can mean for your health. (About one-quarter of the world follows DST.)
Hawaii and Arizona (excluding the Navajo Nation), do not, nor do the US territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. But not all US states and territories observe it. Of course, some people love DST because of the extra evening light that gives them a serotonin boost and more time to do outdoor activities after work or school. Meanwhile, DST doesn’t offer any obvious health benefits, Joseph Takahashi, an expert on biological clocks and chair of the neuroscience department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, told BuzzFeed News. The time change has also been linked to a risk, at least in the short term, of heart attack and stroke. One of the most obvious is sleep disruption, which is often to blame for the temporary rise in traffic accidents (along with driving in the dark), workplace mistakes, and injuries after the start of DST. So pushing those gears one hour forward can have consequences that could last for weeks or maybe even months. That’s because DST disrupts your circadian rhythm - the 24-hour body clock that’s governed by light - by forcing it to follow an unnatural schedule until November when the clocks switch back to standard time.Ĭircadian rhythms are a complex interaction of genes, enzymes, and hormones that control your daily fluctuations in mood, appetite, immune function, digestion, blood pressure, body temperature, and blood sugar, just to name a few.Įven if you pay no attention to the time, just about every tissue, organ, and cell in your body has an internal clock. This 60-minute shift, although seemingly small, can have a larger impact on your health besides making you an hour late for brunch on Sunday morning. While DST can be a sign that brighter, happier days are ahead, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. This means less sunlight in the morning and more of it in the evening, which you may consider a one-way ticket back into, or out of, the winter blues, depending on whether you’re a night owl or early bird. On Sunday, March 13, most people in the US will “spring forward” - aka lose an hour of sleep as the clocks move ahead - and enter daylight saving time (DST).
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