We move the Clocks forward an Hour on Sunday

Society | March 24, 2023, Friday // 16:00
Bulgaria: We move the Clocks forward an Hour on Sunday @Pixabay

On March 26, Sunday, the hands of the clocks will be moved forward one hour.

The shift will be at 3 o'clock (a.m. Bulgarian time) when we switch to daylight saving time.

More than half of the Bulgarian population hates moving the clock forward every spring. Our biological clock synchronizes daily with the changing duration of light and darkness, thus setting our circadian rhythm.

Changing the mechanical clocks of life wreaks havoc on the biological clock in our brains.

Yet the "Sunshine Protection Act," proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio and his colleagues, aims to make daylight saving time permanent. However, they understand it the other way around: Standard Time, not Daylight Savings Time, is most in sync with human biology.

Rulers base their preferences on economics. They think an extra hour of light throughout the year would be good for business. But daylight saving time does not increase the amount of daylight. This would be physically impossible unless we could stop the rotation of the Earth. It just shifts it in time, and for many people the change causes nothing but stress.

According to a study by the University of Chicago, 75% of Americans would prefer to end the practice of changing the clocks twice a year.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that after daylight saving time, nearly 60% of Americans feel exhausted and ineffective for a week or more. The academy raises enough cause for concern: the human body knows very well what time it should be, and when the government interferes with it, health can suffer.

Take the simple case of jet lag, which occurs because our innate circadian rhythm is slow to adapt to changing time zones. It takes about two days for the biological clock to adjust to the local light-dark cycle of the new destination.

In the case of daylight saving time, however, the time on the mechanical clock changes, while the light-dark cycle does not, and the body may never physically adapt to it.

Studies have found a 24 percent increase in the risk of heart attack the day after the clocks are moved forward, and a 5 to 15 percent increase in the risk of a heart attack in the week after switching to daylight saving time. The academy calls it a "preventable cause of heart damage" and speculates that "the risk remains high during the summertime months."

Springtime clock change affects some people more than others. Night owls who tend to stay up late may suffer the worst, while even early risers can become grumpy, apathetic and generally unreasonable within a week or two of moving the clocks forward.

Sleep Medicine recommends scrapping the current bi-annual time changes "in favor of a fixed, national, year-round standard time."

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