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In March, the U.S. Senate, which can’t agree on much of anything, unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act that would have stopped the madness of moving our clocks forward and backward each year. But when the bill reached the House it stalled. So we will “fall back” again this weekend.

Daylight Saving Time started in the U.S. in 1918 to create more daylight hours during warmer months. It is longer now than it was back then. In 2007, we extended the DST by four weeks and two states, Arizona and Hawaii do not comply because this is, well, America and … well, never mind.

There is some scientific evidence all of this springing forward and falling backward messes with our minds. In 2020, researchers concluded that the spring transition to DST “acutely increases fatal traffic accident risk by 6% in the U.S.” The issue, researchers say, is “partly attributed to sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment.” Another study, this one from Denmark, found that switching off and on DST may be related to depression. That study said:

It remains unknown whether they also cause an increase in the incidence rate of depressive episodes. This seems likely because daylight savings time transitions affect circadian rhythms, which are implicated in the etiology of depressive disorder. Therefore, we investigated the effects of daylight savings time transitions on the incidence rate of unipolar depressive episodes. This study shows that the transition from summer time to standard time was associated with an increase in the incidence rate of unipolar depressive episodes. Distress associated with the sudden advancement of sunset, marking the coming of a long period of short days, may explain this finding. 

A University of Michigan study found:
Heart attacks occur most often on Monday mornings. And on one particular Monday, the risk may be further elevated.

Research shows a 24 percent jump in the number of heart attacks occurring the Monday after we “spring forward” for daylight saving time compared with other Mondays throughout the year.

That lost hour of sleep may play a bigger, perhaps more dangerous role in our body’s natural rhythm, according to a 2014 study led by the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center.

Although researchers can’t say precisely what is driving this rise in heart attacks, they have a theory.

The reason more heart attacks happen on Monday mornings could be attributed to several factors, including the stress of starting a new workweek and inherent changes in our sleep-wake cycle. Previous studies have linked poor or insufficient sleep with heart disease.

With daylight saving time, all of this is compounded by one less hour of sleep.

The study has limitations. For example, it was restricted to one state and heart attacks requiring treatment such as angioplasty, therefore excluding patients who died before they got to the hospital or received help.

In fact, the Michigan study said the data is convincing enough that hospitals should increase staff on the Mondays after the “spring forward” Sunday. 

You can find other ammo against changing clocks in the Spring in studies that point to small increases in workplace injuries and medical errors in the days after we spring forward and lose an hour of sleep.  There is also some evidence that more sunshine in the evening results in lower crime rates.

NBC reminds us why we started this practice:

Switching the clocks made sense as a way to conserve fuel during World War I and World War II, the idea being that by pushing daylight to later in the day, people would spend more time outside in the evening and less time inside, where they had to turn on lights or use other resources. 

It seems like every year I see some story blaming farmers for Daylight Saving Time. The old myth says farmers wanted it so they could have more hours of daylight to work. But a more plausible origin goes back to Ben Franklin. The New York Times explains that the real reason may have been to save candle wax, not electricity or increase work hours.

Historians have traced the notion back to Benjamin Franklin, who realized he was sleeping through some daylight hours while visiting Paris in the 18th century. He suggested French officials shoot cannons at sunrise to jolt people out of bed, optimizing the amount of hours they spent awake when it’s light out. That way, they could cut down on using candles to light their homes while awake.

But even that story may not be exactly right.  Research from the University of Washington School of Law clarified the Ben Franklin tale this way:

Like many great ideas, daylight saving time started as satirical fodder. On April 26, 1784, the Journal de Paris published a whimsical letter titled An Economical Project, signed by a “Subscriber” later unmasked as Benjamin Franklin.  Franklin, a man known for staying up all night to play chess, went to bed one night in Paris several hours after midnight.

According to Franklin, an “accidental sudden noise” woke him at 6:00 the next morning, and he was surprised to find his room “filled with light” because his servant had neglected to close the shutters the night before. To confirm this shocking discovery, he “repeated this observation the three following mornings.”

Tongue in cheek, Franklin wrote to the Journal, “[y]our readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon … will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises.” From his observations, Franklin concluded that shifting sleeping patterns to coincide with sunlight would save money on candles. He calculated the amount he would save on candles by waking up (and going to bed) six hours earlier, and then multiplied these savings by the estimated number of families in Paris.38 Franklin’s tedious calculations indicated that Paris residents would save more than ninety-six million livres tournois each year simply by equivalent adjusting their schedules to rise with the sun 39-a sum to approximately $200 million today.

And the Times says, there is a fair amount of debate about whether DST saves energy at all:
Reducing energy consumption is still often cited as a chief driver of daylight saving time, but experts can’t agree on whether that is actually a result. There have been many conflicting studies.

A Department of Energy report from 2008 found that the extended daylight saving time put in place in 2005 saved about 0.5 percent in total electricity use per day.

But Matthew Kotchen, a Yale economist, found a 1 percent increase in electricity use after Indiana introduced daylight saving statewide in 2006, estimating a cost of $9 million per year for consumers.

“The consequence for Indiana has been higher electricity bills and more pollution from power plants,” Mr. Kotchen wrote in Room for Debate.

Why do we change clocks at 2 a.m.? Congress made that decision in 1966 when it passed the Uniform Time Act. 

Who gains from Daylight Saving Time? The Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing says that when we shift to Daylight Saving Time, store sales rise. It seems that people are more likely to stop and shop in the daylight. 

Lyle Beckwith, NACS senior vice president of government relations told a congressional committee this year, “The bottom line is there are many benefits to daylight saving time. In fact, it would be more appropriately referred to as ‘daylight optimization time.’ The idea of switching our clocks is that we need to maximize the light we have at all times of the year.” 

Last minute fact-checking before the midterm

My colleagues over at PolitiFact have some fact-checks that might help you with what will be a weekend loaded with claims and accusation. There are some doozies this week. Here is just a sampling.

— We take a closer look at Biden and manufacturing jobs. Just how many is he really creating?

— Joe Biden’s boast about Social Security inflation adjustment is Pants on Fire

(PolitiFact)

— No, Postal Service workers cannot ‘do anything they want’ to mail-in ballots

— Election officials, lawmakers in Congress have faced increased threats, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., says.

(PolitiFact)

— Ballots found in a Pennsylvania drop box before the voting period opened were legitimate, county official says

(PolitiFact)

New guidelines expand the number of people eligible for obesity surgery

The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders, which represents 72 countries, decided to make new recommendations about who might consider obesity surgery. The changes would vastly increase the number of people who would be eligible for bariatric surgery.

USA Today explained:

The new guidelines reduce the weight limit to qualify for the surgery and drop the requirement that all but the heaviest people must have a medical problem resulting from their obesity. Children and adolescents are also now eligible for surgery.

Weight loss operations that used to require five to seven days of hospitalization and several months of recovery are now done with keyhole incisions, often with robotic assistance, Dr. Ali Aminian said. 

Patients routinely go home the next day and can resume their normal lives, without post-surgical pain, in two or three days, he said. Death rates from surgery have fallen 20- to 30-fold, from 2 or 3 per 100 patients to about 1 in 1,000.

The changes are the first in thirty years. And included the guideline, “Appropriately selected children and adolescents should be considered for metabolic and bariatric surgery.” The updated guidelines also say, “There is no upper patient-age limit to MBS. Older individuals who could benefit from MBS should be considered for surgery after careful assessment of co-morbidities and frailty.” 

Science Daily explained reasons for the updated guidance:

Roughly 1 to 2% of the world’s eligible patient population get weight-loss surgery in any given year. Experts say the overly restrictive consensus statement from 1991 has contributed to the limited use of such a proven safe and effective treatment. Globally, more than 650 million adults had obesity in 2016, which is about 13% of the world’s adult population. CDC reports over 42% of Americans have obesity, the highest rate ever in the U.S.

Most insurance plans do not cover bariatric surgery.