With the clocks moving forward this Sunday, many of us will fear losing an hour of sleep.
And if you think turning clocks forward is literally a waste of time, you’re not alone.
Leading sleep scientists say changing the day by just an hour can have huge consequences and say it should be scrapped entirely.
From increasing cancer rates to making car accidents more likely, daylight saving time can do a lot more harm than just ruining your rest.
Dr Eva Winnebeck, Professor of Chronobiology at the University of Surrey, told MailOnline: “Chronobiologists warn against changing the clock to daylight saving time, every spring or even permanently.”
Leading sleep scientists told MailOnline that daylight saving time causes a host of health problems and argue it should be scrapped entirely.
In the United Kingdom, daylight saving time was first introduced in 1916 as a wartime effort to save electricity and provide more hours of daylight for manufacturing munitions.
However, although the British no longer produce tank shells, in the spring and autumn of each year we still set our clocks forward or back one hour.
The argument is that as days get longer, moving our days forward gives people more hours of sunlight during their workdays.
Proponents of this measure cite everything from Lower crime rates at night to Fewer deer hit by cars. as possible advantages.
However, many scientists claim that the change is not only inconvenient, but also harmful to our health.
The biggest and most obvious impact of the change is that we lose an hour of sleep the night the clock goes forward and have to go to bed an hour earlier the next day.
For the vast majority of people, this will result in nothing more than feeling more tired than usual and the problem should resolve within a few days.
But the fact that an entire nation of people is suddenly slightly sleep-deprived is bound to have some consequences.
Experts warn that setting clocks forward an hour could do much more than ruin sleep. Disrupting our sleep pattern could have serious long-term health effects (file photo)
One study found an increase in ‘cyberloafing’ (the act of spending more of the workday doing unrelated online searches) on Monday after the clock goes forward.
Another study published in 2016 It even found that judges in the US tend to give defendants sentences that are about five percent harsher on the “sleepy Monday” after the time change.
More worryingly, it has also been suggested that the risk of fatal traffic accidents increases by approximately six percent following the transition from daylight saving time to spring.
Estimates suggest that about 28 fatal accidents could be avoided each year in the United States if daylight saving time were abolished.
Dr Winnebeck said: “The spring time change, where we turn the clocks forward one hour, is the time change that is often most detrimental to our health and well-being.”
‘Lack of sleep can have many negative consequences and, with the time change, it affects millions of people at the same time.’
Disrupting our sleep in this way can also have knock-on effects on our overall health.
Dr Megan Crawford, a sleep researcher at the University of Strathclyde and member of the British Sleep Society, told MailOnline: “There is an increased risk of cardiovascular events, an increased risk of suicidal behaviour… and increased mortality in the days after changing our clocks. : All of this is related to the loss of that hour of sleep.
Dr Crawford says the British Sleep Society believes standard time should be restored and used year-round due to the “short-term impact of the time change, the potential impact throughout the summer and the detrimental impact of possible permanent summer schedules”. ‘
Our bodies need sunlight in the morning to adjust our circadian rhythms and we lose it during daylight saving time. This means that in summer, as shown here in London, travelers do not have the opportunity to wake up before arriving at the office.
Our bodies have a kind of internal clock called a circadian rhythm, which determines when we eat, when we sleep, when we are most active, and when our brain is at its best.
While the solar day lasts 24 hours, the body’s rhythm tends to be a little longer.
This means that someone living in darkness would naturally wake up a little later each day, since their biological clock is not synchronized with the solar day.
We humans can only keep our biological clocks in line thanks to an initial dose of bright morning sun every day.
“We rely on a bright light signal to align them with the normal 24-hour solar cycle,” said Dr. Sophie Bostock, sleep scientist and founder of The Sleep Scientist.
“If we don’t get that signal first thing in the morning, then we’re falling behind.”
Since daylight saving time gives us fewer hours of daylight in the morning, many people miss that initial boost of natural light that helps realign our biological clocks.
Dr. Bostock said, “From a circadian rhythm perspective, there are definitely reasons to abandon daylight saving time.”
There is a six percent increase in fatal car crashes in the days after the clock advances; Experts estimate that the time change could cost around 28 lives a year (file photo)
There is now a growing, if somewhat controversial, body of evidence that this mismatch between the sun and our bodies can have serious long-term impacts on health.
The main problem with testing how daylight saving time affects us in the long term is that we don’t have much data from times when we don’t observe daylight saving time.
Dr Crawford said: “The best data we can get comes from health differences between people living on different sides of a time zone, with poorer health in those living on the western side.”
‘This is because the discrepancy between the time of the sun and our clocks is greater (in the West).
Studies have shown that those who live in the west of a time zone have higher risks of leukemia, stomach cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, and more.
Residents in the West also experience lower life expectancy, higher rates of obesity and diabetes, and even lower incomes.
Since this mismatch is very similar to those experienced when clocks move forward, some scientists say daylight saving time could be having a similar impact.
However, some scientists say the damage to our health could be even more direct.
Dr Rachel Edgar, a molecular virologist at Imperial College London, told MailOnline that these types of alterations could even make us more susceptible to disease.
Dr. Edgar says: “Evidence from different animal models suggests that disruption of our circadian rhythms increases the severity of different infectious diseases, such as influenza A or herpesvirus.”
While he adds that more research is needed to see if this is the case in humans, he notes that “biological clocks can affect both virus replication and immune responses to these infections.”
And he concludes: “There is a broad consensus among scientists who work with circadian rhythms and sleep that any advantages of daylight saving time are offset by the possible negative effects on our health and well-being.”