Daylight saving time ends tonight: Why the clocks fall back one hour

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What are some of the potential health effects of DST?

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Research shows that something as simple as switching the clocks may have some serious effects on cognitive health. John Anderson is an assistant professor in the departments of cognitive science and psychology at Carleton University. Anderson said one of the main concerns is how the system throws off our sleep schedules.

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“You’ve probably got a sense of when your ‘best’ time of day is, the time when you can really hone in and focus and do your best work or exercise at your peak,” Anderson said. “When you mess with your circadian rhythm, that internal clock, it is very bad for people.”

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Anderson said the research behind the DST switch increasingly shows the potential dangers this can have on our bodies, a phenomenon known as “social jet lag.”

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“Artificially changing when you wake up throws off all the internal clocks in your body and can spike stress hormones, like cortisol, which can lead to impaired memory function,” Anderson said. “In addition to memory impairments, there are also changes in levels of alertness that can be dangerous. For example, there are way more car crashes after daylight saving time, and these likely reflect lapses in attention and sleep deprivation that come when we change the clock.”

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Anderson added that these effects can often persist long-term and lead to other complications. “When your clock starts to become misaligned, it can cause a wide range of symptoms including brain fog, digestive issues, heart issues, and spike your risk for inflammatory disease including diabetes, heart attack, and cancer,” he said.

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What’s behind the growing movement to get rid of DST?

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Even since its inception, the time switch has been controversial. Most of us aren’t bug-catchers, and the western world no longer runs primarily on coal. Is it time to stop fiddling with our clocks twice a year?

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Recently, Liberal Member of Parliament Marie-France Lalonde proposed a private members’ bill that would eliminate the bi-annual time-switch entirely.

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U.S. President Donald Trump also isn’t a fan of the practice.

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“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time,” Trump has said on Truth Social last December, calling it “inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

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However, he has since said it’s hard to get consensus around the issue. And people can’t agree whether to keep the clocks as they are in the fall or the spring.

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“This should be the easiest one of all, but it’s a 50-50 issue. If something’s a 50-50 issue, it’s hard to get excited. I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier, because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark,” Trump said in March, according to Reuters. “A lot of people like it one way, a lot of people like it the other way, it’s very even. And usually I find when that’s the case — what else do we have to?”

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Anderson also thinks it may be time to stop changing the clocks.

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“The world we live in right now is so hard on sleep and biological rhythms, from the lights we get exposed to at night, to the schedules we keep,” Anderson said. “I think anything we can do to avoid further disruptions to the circadian rhythm is a good thing. The disruption may be short-lived, but it is noticeable.”

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