Apodaca: A permanent daylight saving time has its detractors — based on science

When I heard that the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, and that the House was also expected to approve the legislation, I felt like celebrating.

I wanted to break out in dance — in front of my mirror, of course, where no one else could see my embarrassing moves. But still.

Finally, I thought. Amid war and plague, hardship and injustice, at last there’s something we can all agree on and feel better about: Changing our clocks twice a year stinks, and we’re not going to do it anymore. Hallelujah. Things are really looking up now.

Well, that didn’t last long.

The objections started immediately — not to the part about ending the changing of clocks, mind you. On that point, at least, we can all concur. The biannual practice is widely loathed for turning us into a nation of miserable, sleep-deprived zombies.

Every spring we all moan about losing an hour of sleep, and each fall we mourn as the sun sets depressingly early. And with each change we throw our hands up and demand to know why we keep doing this to ourselves.

Compounding our collective frustration is the sense that this is an archaic practice, born in a time when it had more practical value than in our modern society.

Benjamin Franklin — the founding father who gave us such bon mots as “lost time is never found again” — is sometimes credited with promoting the concept of daylight saving time. But that was largely because he wrote a humorous essay encouraging the French get their derrières out of bed before noon.

Daylight saving time really took off in the early 20th century, first in Canada, followed by Europe and the U.S. as a means of saving fuel during World War I. It was largely dropped after that but returned to the U.S. during World War II, although there was no national framework until one emerged in the mid-1960s.

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That has been the system ever since, albeit with plenty of tinkering along the way. There was a notable exception in the much-hated, short-lived attempt at permanent daylight saving time during the energy crisis of the 1970s; and Arizona and Hawaii have chosen to keep standard time year-round.

Now, thanks to the pending legislation, a big change could be coming. Or, more precisely, we would stop changing. For a nanosecond, I thought this would be universally welcomed news.

But there’s a problem with the legislation, critics contend. They say that settling on permanent daylight saving time, rather than standard time, is misguided and potentially harmful.

Sure, the idea of extending daylight in the latter part of the day is attractive, they acknowledged. But it comes at the expense of mornings, which will remain in darkness later.

This works against our natural body clocks — what’s known as “circadian rhythms,” the internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle — which are attuned to light and dark, and are more closely aligned with standard time.

Keeping daylight saving time in winter months will force many people to rise while hours of darkness remain, and that is potentially damaging to health and safety. Students, a cohort already prone to unhealthy sleep patterns, could suffer more acute fatigue. We might see more early-morning car accidents.

I couldn’t ignore this information because it was coming from people who actually know what they’re talking about — doctors, scientists and sleep experts. I began to realize that our manipulation of clocks — not unlike our placement of time zones, but that’s another story — exemplifies humankind’s quest to bend nature to our will.

Fortunately, one local authority, Dr. Jay Puangco, chief of service for the Hoag Voltmer Sleep Center, offered a somewhat nuanced view.

Puangco is all for ceasing the changing of clocks because of the deleterious health effects, and he would prefer permanent standard time. But the bigger issue, he said, is that most people don’t value sleep highly enough.

Sleep is a pillar of good health equal in importance to good nutrition and exercise, a fact that’s often overlooked. Indeed, some people even brag about their lack of sleep, as if it’s a badge of honor or show of strength.

It’s common for people to incur a “chronic sleep debt” due to their work and lifestyle routines, Puangco said. Complicating matters is that we live in an increasingly complex, globalized economy in which workers are often compelled to interact with others in different time zones.

A typical pattern, he said, is for people to get a deficient amount of sleep during the work week. Then they try to catch up on weekends, but that’s generally an unrealistic goal. The sleep debt accumulates and health declines.

As for permanent daylight saving time, I floated the idea that businesses and institutions might adjust by pushing back start times. California notably passed a law due to take effect this fall that mandates high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

Puangco was skeptical that we’ll see a big push for similar policies. A more likely scenario, he believes, is that people will gradually adapt.

“Eventually we’ll adjust. Life will go on. We’ll make changes in our behavior and sleep patterns.”

It’s not the unmitigated good news I was hoping for, but I’ll still be glad if the law passes. Perhaps instead of dancing I’ll take a nap.

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