> I'm in BC. The astro-nerd in me would have preferred to see permanent Standard Time instead of a permanent +1 offset.
So would the folks who study circadian rhythms:
> Over much of the highly-populated areas of Canada, the sun would not rise until about 9 am in winter under DST, and the daylight will linger an hour later in summer evenings than under Standard Time. As a Northern country, Canada includes higher latitudes where the effects of late winter dawns and late summer dusks under DST would be felt more profoundly. What long-term effects on health can we expect from year-round DST? As predicted from our understanding of the human biological clock, our brain clock will try to synchronize to dawn and push us to go to bed later. However, our social clock will force us to wake an hour earlier in the morning. Will this have any health effects?
> We have good evidence for the negative impact of being an hour off of biological time, and this comes from studies on the health of populations living on the edges of time zones. We have arbitrarily divided the earth into one-hour time zones, so that people on the east side of a time zone see the sun rise an hour earlier (according to their social clocks) than people on the west side of the same time zone. Researchers have analyzed the health records and economic status of those two populations, and have found poorer health outcomes on the west side: increased rates of obesity and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (Gu et al., 2017). Moreover, people on the west sides of time zones earned 3% less in per capita income (Giuntella and Mazzonna, 2019). What could account for this? As predicted, people on the west sides of time zones go to bed later than people on the east sides, but then have to get up at the same time in the morning because of fixed work and school schedules. Therefore they lose sleep: about 20 minutes per weeknight, which adds up to a significant sleep debt over the week. We know from other research that sleep deprivation negatively impacts health and workplace performance. We can already see the negative impacts of a one-hour difference across a time zone, and year-round DST would put our social clocks another hour out of alignment with our biological clocks.
I guess northern Europe must be an unpopulated wasteland where everybody's health just instantly declines.
I find these explanations to these studies so bizarre. We know that there are large populations living significantly further north, who don't get sunlight in the morning in winter, no matter whether there's DST or not. We also know that they get almost perpetual light during summer. If these explanations were true then you would expect a country like Sweden to have an impact on life expectancy and illness from this. But it's not. It's about as rich as Canada and has about the same life expectancy.
The European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), European Sleep Research Society (ESRS), and Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) put out a joint statement that recommends all-year Standard Time in the EU:
Cities in northern Europe, like Stockholm and Oslo, already have sunrise times as late or later than Vancouver will have under permanent DST.
If the effects of shifting the clock an hour are as extreme as purported, then we should already see those negative health effects in populations that live their entire lives under those conditions, but we don't.
Do we know that we don't see adverse health effects on those populations? I couldn't find any studies on the subject. I think it would be very hard to measure, since you can't really compare without comparing populations of different countries, and at that point any effects can be attributed to a myriad of differences between countries.
I'm not missing the point: the various various folks who study sleep and chronobiology would have (I hope) reviewed all the literature, including studies that cover northern Europe, before coming to their all-year Standard Time conclusion.
A position paper from Society for Research on Biological Rhythms (SRBR) in Journal of Biological Rhythms cites Russian data for example:
> Borisenkov MF, Tserne TA, Panev AS, Kuznetsova ES, Petrova NB, Timonin VD, Kolomeichuk SN, Vinogradova IA, Kovyazina MS, Khokhlov NA, et al. (2017) Seven-year survey of sleep timing in Russian children and adolescents: chronic 1-h forward transition of social clock is associated with increased social jetlag and winter pattern of mood seasonality. Biol Rhythm Res 3–12.
Last time I checked a map (parts/lots of) Russia is just as north as Finland, Sweden, and Norway, and still the Russian government decided to rollback all-year DST.
Perhaps the effects differ in magnitude depending on geographic region, but as a general rule all-year Standard Time appears to be the best policy for most people most of the time.
I mean it's possible for there to be bad health effects from something without it outright killing everyone. This is why things like hygiene are tough! You can have terrible hygiene and still be alive for a long time.
Perhaps if Sweden adopted a different policy it would have an even longer life expectancy!
> Perhaps if Sweden adopted a different policy it would have an even longer life expectancy!
The policy of being between 55 and 69 N? I'm not sure the world is ready for another viking age.
Joking aside, GPs point was that Sweden has long nights and long days. Based on the studies you'd expect life expectancy to be worse there than in more Southern parts, like most of Canada. It isn't.
So would the folks who study circadian rhythms:
> Over much of the highly-populated areas of Canada, the sun would not rise until about 9 am in winter under DST, and the daylight will linger an hour later in summer evenings than under Standard Time. As a Northern country, Canada includes higher latitudes where the effects of late winter dawns and late summer dusks under DST would be felt more profoundly. What long-term effects on health can we expect from year-round DST? As predicted from our understanding of the human biological clock, our brain clock will try to synchronize to dawn and push us to go to bed later. However, our social clock will force us to wake an hour earlier in the morning. Will this have any health effects?
> We have good evidence for the negative impact of being an hour off of biological time, and this comes from studies on the health of populations living on the edges of time zones. We have arbitrarily divided the earth into one-hour time zones, so that people on the east side of a time zone see the sun rise an hour earlier (according to their social clocks) than people on the west side of the same time zone. Researchers have analyzed the health records and economic status of those two populations, and have found poorer health outcomes on the west side: increased rates of obesity and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer (Gu et al., 2017). Moreover, people on the west sides of time zones earned 3% less in per capita income (Giuntella and Mazzonna, 2019). What could account for this? As predicted, people on the west sides of time zones go to bed later than people on the east sides, but then have to get up at the same time in the morning because of fixed work and school schedules. Therefore they lose sleep: about 20 minutes per weeknight, which adds up to a significant sleep debt over the week. We know from other research that sleep deprivation negatively impacts health and workplace performance. We can already see the negative impacts of a one-hour difference across a time zone, and year-round DST would put our social clocks another hour out of alignment with our biological clocks.
* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology