| urban rednek |
10-07-2021 10:01 AM |
My $0.02 worth
I don't mind changing the clocks twice a year to make the most of our daylight. The further north you live, the more it matters.
If it is so easy to throw our circadian rhythm out of sync, and it is detrimental to our health, maybe we should prevent people from travelling outside of their time zones when holidaying. :thinking-006:
If it saves one life...
An opinion from an expert on the subject:
https://calgarysun.com/opinion/colum...e-ed15a0341535
Excerpt:
Quote:
Licia Corbella
Publishing date: Oct 07, 2021
The referendum question will be: “Do you want Alberta to adopt year-round daylight time, which is summer hours, eliminating the need to change our clocks twice a year?”
Had I not consulted with an expert back in July on this I would have voted yes to this question. However, after speaking with Michael Antle, a psychology professor at the University of Calgary and one of the world’s foremost experts on circadian rhythms, I have changed my mind and intend to vote no.
Antle says as much as we all hate losing an hour of sleep every spring, doing that is far better for our health than moving to permanent daylight time. The best option would be to stick to natural time or standard time permanently, but that’s not an option the provincial government has given us.
“We’re being given a choice between a bad option and a worse option,” said Antle, a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine and an adjunct professor with the department of physiology and pharmacology.
“The best option, of course, would have been to move Alberta to standard time. But in this case, the (least) bad option is the status quo. And it’s funny to be saying that because I’ve been arguing to get rid of the clock changes for years. And now I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to advocate for them because it’s the lesser of two evils in this case,” said Antle, who is also vice-president of the Canadian Society for Chronobiology.
If Albertans vote yes to permanently change to daylight time, that decision will lead to more accidents, less productivity, more cancer, heart attacks, obesity and diabetes as a result of delaying sunrise in the winter.
Antle says many people think this vote is an arbitrary decision based on whether they prefer more light in the morning or the evening, but this is not the kind of thing that should be left up to a popularity contest decided on a whim at the ballot box.
According to a study by University of Pittsburgh economics professor Osea Giuntella, entitled: “Circadian Rhythms, Sleep, and Cognitive Skills — Evidence from an Unsleeping Giant,” later sunsets lead to people being 21 per cent more likely to be obese, a 19 per cent increase in heart attack and increased rates of diabetes.
What that means economically, according to that study, is later sunset will lead to an $82 per person per year increase in health-care costs (or about $375 million for Alberta) and a $23 per person per year decrease in overall workplace productivity due to decreased efficiency and missed days due to illness (about a $100-million loss to Alberta’s economy).
Another study by Fangyi Gu, a U.S. professor of oncology, states that every 20-minute delay in sunset leads to increases in cancer: nine per cent more stomach cancer, 11 per cent more liver cancer, four per cent more prostate cancer, 13 per cent more leukemia, 3.7 per cent more breast cancer, 16 per cent more esophageal cancer and 10 per cent more uterine cancer.
Antle says if people vote yes to this question and Alberta moves to permanent daylight time in 2023, in December sunrise in Calgary will happen after 9:30 a.m. In Edmonton it will be closer to 10 a.m. and in Grand Prairie, which is very far west, sunrise will happen at around 10:30 a.m. “That means kids will be having their first recess in the dark.”
Regardless of what we try to do by going to bed earlier etc., our circadian rhythm — our body clock — tries to follow the sun. We can’t change that, says Antle, no matter what we do to the clocks.
“What this ballot is asking us is, do we as a society want to wake up and go to work and go to school an hour earlier in the winter than we do now. Those 8 a.m. meetings are going to feel like 7 a.m. meetings.”
So, vote yes for the equalization question and no for moving to permanent Daylight Time. Those answers are what’s best for Alberta, and for you and your family.
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