![]() So, it's not surprising that daylight saving time affects our internal clock, Ptacek said. There is no question that we have been changing our clocks long before daylight saving time came along." "Whereas, now, people stay up all night and turn the lights on, which affects our biological clock. "Before artificial lighting, humans tended to live much more by the sun cycle," Ptacek said. Coleman Distinguished Professorship in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. Louis Ptacek, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the John C. "It is not surprising that when you change our time to respond to something other than the sun and daylight that different chronotypes are going to have a difficult time," said Dr. One expert believes daylight saving time is only one of the ways we try to fool our biological clock. "But this natural adjustment is interrupted by daylight saving time," he said. "If we didn't change to daylight saving time, people would adjust to dawn during the summer and again to dawn in the autumn," Roenneberg. This was especially true for night owls - those who stay up late and sleep late. However, it never adjusted to the return to daylight saving time in spring. In a another study, Roenneberg's group looked at the timing of sleep and activity for eight weeks during the change to daylight saving time in 50 people, taking into account each person's natural clock preferences, or "chronotypes," which range from morning larks to night owls.įor both morning larks and night owls, their timing for sleep and peak activity easily adjusted when daylight saving time ended in the fall. The researchers found that sleep time on days off work when daylight saving time took effect followed the seasonal progression of dawn under standard time, but not under daylight saving time. In the study, Roenneberg's group collected data on the sleep patterns of 55,000 people in Central Europe. "This could have long-term effects," he said. By seasonality, he means that our internal clock is in tune with the natural change in light throughout the year. 4, he added.ĭaylight saving time may be one cause of what Roenneberg called our lack of seasonality. It returns to normal this year when standard time returns on Nov. "During the winter, there is a beautiful tracking of dawn in human sleep behavior, which is completely and immediately interrupted when daylight saving time is introduced in March," he said. "The circadian clock does not change to the social change," Roenneberg said. It actually changes in four-minute intervals, exactly the time it takes for the sun to cross one line of longitude, Roenneberg explained. People's circadian rhythm - the body's internal clock - follows the sun and changes depending on where you live. The pure social change of time cannot fool the clock." We forget that there is a biological clock that is as old as living organisms, a clock that cannot be fooled. "This is one of those human arrogances - that we can do whatever we want as long as we are disciplined. ![]() "When you change clocks to daylight saving time, you don't change anything related to sun time," explained lead researcher Till Roenneberg of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. ![]() In fact, daylight saving time can cause a significant seasonal disruption that might have other effects on our bodies, according to the report in the Oct. 24 (HealthDay News) - Changing to daylight saving time may give people an hour more of sunlight, but it appears that their internal body clocks never really adjusts to the change, German researchers report. ![]()
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