Kind: captions
Language: en
are you more of an early bird or a night
owl if you prefer your sunlight in the
evenings permanent daylight saving time
might sound pretty good and it could
become a reality in March 2022 the U.S
Senate approved a bill to make Daylight
Saving Time permanent but some experts
say it could come at a price to our
health I would love to have light in the
morning and in the early evening all
year round if we were to be on permanent
daylight saving time you could see where
it would be pitch black some places at
eight o'clock in the morning then people
are going to be commuting to to school
and to work in the dark and we're going
to be sending our kids to wait out for
the school bus in the dark they if the
bill becomes law it would mean later
sunsets yay but also later sun rises an
hour later than usual what people have
found when people are going to work in
the pitch black is it actually
a play shouldn't be and some of those
genes are not operating properly when
we're not in sync with our biological
world
Early Morning Light helps set our
internal clocks or circadian rhythms
which Drive many systems in our bodies
and even tell us when to sleep some
research suggests Morning Light plays a
role in determining when the body
releases cortisol a stress hormone that
makes us more alert we really think of
circadian rhythms as really a
fundamental part of life that is it's
critical that our biology is if you will
in sync with the rising and setting of
the Sun in our environment and when
Morning Light is delayed our internal
clocks are out of step with the sun in
what's called circadian misalignment
when we're getting our light too light
in the day not enough light in the
morning and we're losing sleep we call
it circadian misalignment and those
things together can affect Health in so
many different ways and the effects can
be more extreme depending on where you
live in relation to your time zone for
example let's look at these two cities
Indianapolis list and Chicago
Indianapolis is on the western edge of
the Eastern Time Zone confusing I know
but bear with me here and Chicago is on
the Eastern edge of the central time
zone so even though they're less than
200 miles apart and they get similar
amounts of sunlight the time on the
clocks is off by an hour so when the Sun
rises in Indianapolis at 7 A.M it's only
6 a.m in Chicago
if we look at the health of people on
the Western Edge versus an Eastern Edge
that are adjacent to each other the
people on the western edge have more
health problems we know that those who
are on the western part of the time zone
have higher rates of cancer one study
found that people living on the western
edge of a time zone and get more natural
light in the evenings got less sleep
than their counterparts on the Eastern
side and had higher rates of heart
disease diabetes and breast cancer they
get Leslie higher risk of heart disease
higher risk of cancer higher risk of
type 2 diabetes we think that if we
shift to permanent daylight saving time
that we're going to increase the risk of
these types of problems for our society
so what's the science on the healthiest
choice it's clear that we should
probably stop shifting every year we
know that that spring forward shift is
associated with increased risks of motor
vehicle accidents fatal motor vehicle
accidents in our highways as well as
things like heart attacks and strokes
the ideal decision would be to select
permanent Standard time but if Standard
Time becomes permanent some places like
Boston could see summer sunrises as
early as 4 am but according to science
all that morning sunlight is critical
permanent Standard time is the healthy
choice because Morning Light is just
critical to our health it wakes us up it
gets us going it helps us fall asleep
easier at night so having that Bright
Morning Light is really really essential
particularly for people who can't
control their schedules like teenagers
and some of our essential workers
so when we're thinking about permanent
daylight saving time we're going to go
ahead and gain light one way and lose
light another and so we have to decide
as a society what is going to be the
healthiest thing for our society
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