health

How daylight saving time affects health

6 Comments
By LINDSEY TANNER

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

6 Comments
Login to comment

A very one-sided bit of analysis.

The natural time for us to wake is at dawn and then sleep after dusk. Because we use man-made time now, we get divorced from that and daylight saving gets us more aligned to our circadian rhythm.

Modern-day research has found little or no such cost savings.

An extra unecessary hour of electric light use is obviously wasteful

1 ( +4 / -3 )

So one hour difference twice a year is worse than say, working shifts or nights or not getting enough sleep due to work or having kids.

Speaking from experience, going forward one hour to British Summer Time means you have glorious, long summer evenings to enjoy out and about. Going back to GMT in October means you are less likely to have to wake up in the dark, which doesn't help in the winter. Both of which is less disruptive to the health than the things I described earlier.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Personally, I think the problem in Japan is not the lack of daylight savings but that Japan is actually in the wrong time zone. Japan is too morning loaded year round. This means that we could enjoy more light in the evening with a one-off adjustment, not the slight but still significant twice yearly disruptions described in the article.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Personally, I think the problem in Japan is not the lack of daylight savings but that Japan is actually in the wrong time zone. 

I actually thought the same for a long time and finally did some research on this. In fact, solar noon is at noon in Japan, more or less:

04:25Sunday, 21 June 2020 (GMT+9)

Sunrise in Tokyo, Japan

19:00Sunday, 21 June 2020 (GMT+9)

If you moved the clock, there would be 8 hours of light after noon and 6.5 hours before noon.

If you work on the scientific principle that daylight should be split evenly between morning and night, then there current system is more correct.

Socially it makes no sense for the sun to come up at 4:30 and set at 7. For this reason, I agree that Japan should move permanently to a different time zone.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Work balance is the problem. We should all work in time with the seasons.

This doesn't suit consumerism though.

And I don't expect the types of changes you can see in scandinavian countries (for example 4 or 3 day working weeks) that favour family work-life balance coming to Japan anytime soon.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites