Daylight Savings - Are You Ready to Spring Forward?

macawake, MSN · Mar 20, 2022

7 hours ago, Tweety said:

But really is changing the clock an hour going to change those daylight hours? It just changes the time of day.

It makes a huge difference. You do different things during different times of the day. Like sleep or be awake ?

I normally work nights but during the pandemic I’ve been working day shifts for several months in a row. I worked days from October to January and I hated leaving work at 3.30 pm in total darkness. I’m not even exaggerating when I use the word hate.

We start Daylight Savings Sunday a week from today. On Saturday the sun will rise at 5.32 am (and it gets light about an hour before that) and the sun will set at 6.16 pm (and it gets dark about an hour later). On Sunday the sun will rise at 6.29 am and set at 7.18 pm.

Around midsummer the sun will rise at approximately 3.30 am and set around 10.30 pm. Without Daylight Savings that would have been 2.30 am and 9.30 pm. As I mentioned it never gets dark in the hours in between, but the sun is not up. Very few people get up any earlier than 3.30 to enjoy the sunshine, many more will enjoy an outdoors dinner with family or friends at 10 pm and enjoy the sunshine and watch a beautiful sunset. Daylight Savings means more ”useful” daylight.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Mar 21, 2022

3 hours ago, macawake said:

It makes a huge difference. You do different things during different times of the day. Like sleep or be awake ?

I'll take your word that one hour makes a "huge difference" to you.

I work 12 hours shifts so I often leave for work in the dark and come home in the dark and don't really think about it much. On days off, I always get up in the dark to feet the dogs at 6AM or they wake me up (although they haven't figured out the time change yet and have been letting me sleep). One thing it will do that people worry about more accidents happening is that kids will be catching their school busses in the dark in the "Winter" here and sleep experts are saying we should stay on standard time, not the current daylight savings time.

Oh well, everyone has an opinion.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Mar 21, 2022

8 hours ago, JKL33 said:

Well, it moves that hour of daylight from "getting ready for work time" to "personal time" for a lot of people.

The experts quite dramatic.

I am no expert but I suspect standard time significantly contributes significantly to depression/SAD in some areas of the country. It's hard to care about "jet lag" (not even a real one such as one would experience when traveling to/from areas with the exact opposite of one's usual sleep/wake rhythms) and the minutiae of circadian rhythm if the bottom line is that there is almost ZERO daylight when one is done with the work day. Many people find that not remotely pleasant. It also seems counterintuitive to our more recent acknowledgements of need for self-care in that the suggestion of (only) needing daylight for the purposes of getting the work day started seems like someone else's version of a good idea, not the workers who are driving home in the dark/dusk at 5 pm with plenty of waking hours left in the day.

I also do not imagine that early dusk benefits our obesity problem. Again, no expertise--just my feeling.

They also say that this change could contribute to depression due to the perpetual "jet lag" and incorrect exposure to daylight. I guess they're the experts, but we seem to have hefty incidence of depression at baseline so it seems unlikely that more personal-time/after-work daylight is going to worsen that.

Ah well. What would we possibly find to do if not argue about things.

I was speaking from a Swedish perspective where the daylight hours are extremely long in the Summer and extremely short in Winter. I can see right now they have about 12 hours of daylight so maybe shifting the time makes a "huge difference" to them, but when there's 18 or more hours of daylight why bother.

School kids at bus stops aside, I do imagine if you ask most American adults we would prefer more sunlight in the evening and perhaps the kids would too.

But often what we prefer and want isn't always healthy. I do believe there's something to be said for having daylight in those waking hours. Daylight signal the brain it's time to wake up and work. I find it hard to motivate in the dark some mornings. But like I said above I'm used to getting up at 5AM in the dark and leaving in the dark, and coming home in the dark.

I agree the sleep experts are being a bit dramatic in their assessments. I do think that most of us hearty people do fine and adjust. But I remember a study and found it that cardiac events arise in the vulnerable around the time changes. So I wish we would stop either way.

https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/news/20211105/harmful-effects-of-daylight-savings

JKL33 · Mar 21, 2022

Deleted. I think I misread a previous comment.

kbrn2002, ADN, RN · Mar 21, 2022

The feds may or may not decide not to proceed with doing away with DST. Considering the senate passed the bill with a 100% vote and later several members complained they didn't even know what they were voting for to which I say "huh? you didn't even know what you were voting for??" So next it will go to the House for a vote and who knows what will happen there.

Even if they decide against this at the federal level I am a little concerned on the local level. I live in a border town on the WI/MN border and MN has their own bill to stop DSL while WI does not. I am just imagining the chaos for people around here that live in one state and work or make appointments in the other! Imagine leaving at your usual time only to arrive one hour early, or an hour late depending on which direction you cross the border only because you are crossing time zones. That's just way to confusing for me and I'd hate to have to keep up with figuring that out.

There has to be at least a few people here that have to cross time zones to go back and forth between work and home. How did you figure out your daily commute?