Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A group of researchers in the UK affiliated with the BSS (British Sleep Society) published a paper this week calling for the permanent abolition of Daylight Saving Time (DST) and adherence to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in large part because modern evidence suggests having that extra hour of sunlight in the evenings is worse for our health than we thought back in the 1970s when the concept was all the rage in Europe.
Not only does GMT more closely align with the natural day/light cycle in the UK, the boffins assert, but decades of research into sleep and circadian rhythms have been produced since DST was enacted that have yet to be considered.
The human circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle our bodies go through, drives a lot about our health beyond sleep. It regulates hormone release, gene expression, metabolism, mood (who isn't grumpier when waking up in January?), and the like. In short, it's important. Messing with that rhythm by forcing ourselves out of bed earlier for several months out of the year can have lasting effects, the researchers said.
According to their review of recent research, having light trigger our circadian rhythms in the mornings to wake us up is far more important than an extra hour of light in the evenings. In fact, contrary to the belief that an extra hour of light in the evenings is beneficial, it might actually cause health problems by, again, mucking about with the human body's understanding of what time it is and how we ought to feel about it.
"Disruption of the daily synchronization of our body clocks causes disturbances in our physiology and behavior … which leads to negative short and long-term physical and mental health outcomes," the authors said.
That, and we've just plain fooled ourselves into thinking it benefits us in any real way.
[...] And for the love of sleep, the researchers beg, don't spring forward permanently.
"Mornings are the time when our body clocks have the greatest need for light to stay in sync," said Dr Megan Crawford, lead author and senior lecturer in psychology at University of Strathclyde. "At our latitudes there is simply no spare daylight to save during the winter months and given the choice between natural light in the morning and natural light in the afternoon, the scientific evidence favors light in the morning."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 30, @05:58PM (2 children)
>wear more clothes and spend more time indoors and live further north than "we" did 200K years ago, maybe even 20K years ago
For people north of lat 45, yeah - there are some concerns up there in the winter, and not so many people have ever lived the Eskimo lifestyle.
As for history, if you go back even 100 years, people spent much more time outdoors, not only working in the fields, walking instead of driving, but also because air conditioning wasn't a thing.
Since the advent of "energy efficient buildings" (which actually consume FAR more energy than buildings without refrigerant based air conditioning), there are a significant number of people that are approaching zero hours of actual sunlight exposure per day, never opening their UV blocking windows, etc. That's where the insanity lies: never ever exposing your skin to full sunlight and expecting that it's not going to have significant consequences.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday October 30, @06:55PM (1 child)
Also don't forget high SPF sunscreens.
Medically true as I understand it that you only need perhaps "ten" minutes to catalyze enough vitamin D to avoid illness symptoms under ideal conditions, but if people slather on mysterious compounds claiming a SPF of 15, then they would need to sit outside for 2.5 hours. Still, I'm a busy dude, I'd rather sit outside a couple of minutes and then do what I want, rather than burn half the day.
Optimum health is not necessarily coincident with minimum level necessary to avoid immediate deficiency symptoms, so there's that too. Much like optimal water consumption level is not "just barely enough to avoid immediate short term death"
The CDC's NHANES study is wild and interesting and I've been following it for decades (its annual for at least some decades now IIRC). They basically pick 5000 to 10000 randos and do a complete labwork on them and then make endless statistical reports. Like a really detailed census, but medically oriented. Pretty cool stuff gets reported. Almost all medical research is done solely to sell an expensive new pill, but at least NHANES does basic research and is like F-it we're going to measure everyone's ferritin levels and just send it and see what happens when they crunch the numbers. IIRC the result was something like 1 in 5 chicks has medically clinically low blood ferritin levels in the USA. Kind of F'd up if you think about it that 1 in 5 chicks you see out there on the street are at least somewhat sick, but not as messed up as the Vit D test results which IIRC were absolutely awful.
The "good" news about 1 in 5 chicks having clinically low ferritin levels is there's a huge number of symptoms so they can treat the symptoms with expensive pills individually instead of treating the cause. Or.. they could eat a better diet... nah F that push them pills to get them profits. Shitty USA medical system...
I think the only way to live a healthy lifestyle in the USA is to knock out some college o-chem classes and learn to read medical journal articles directly because everyone else is pushing some kind of financial scheme, not trying to make people healthy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 30, @07:14PM
> CDC's NHANES study
See, I would expect that national health programs would really get into stuff like that, actually treating problems and getting costs down - not to mention improving health before it's a problem requiring treatment.
Our family recently experienced a horrific episode of having our son handled like a funding source to be optimized (group home...) Not only is it inhumane to "the client", it makes a bunch of unhappy employees running the scam too.
In Capitalist healthcare, YOU are the income source to be squeezed for maximum profit. The longer I live (and work in the medical device industry) the more I come to the conclusion: The only way to win is not to play. Avoid medical "care" at every possible opportunity. Too bad they actually do improve outcomes with early detection, sometimes.
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