Gentle readers who live on those parts of the planet that subscribe to daylight savings time are no doubt aware of something that Geezer’s wife informed him of earlier today: in three days, we move our clocks ahead one hour, losing one hour of something, most likely sleep. What does that do, exactly, for our circadian clocks? Not a thing. And therein lies the problem. As Science Daily reports, research conducted at the University of Munich found that while humans can easily change the time on clocks, they can’t change the time on humans, and that is especially true in the spring. The journal reports that scientists analyzed the timing of sleep and activity for eight
weeks around each of the two DST transitions –fall and spring–in 50 people, taking into
account each individual’s natural clock preferences, or “chronotypes,”
ranging from morning larks to night owls. They found something surprising: the timing of
both sleep and peak activity levels readily adjust to the release from
DST in autumn, but the timing of activity does not adjust to the
start of DST in spring.
Essentially, said one researcher, biological timing stays on standard, winter time,
while people have to adjust their social schedules to the advanced clock
time throughout the summer.
Read more in Science Daily.
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Gimme that daylight after work and I don’t care how many hours we have to spring ahead or fall back. It doesn’t bother me.
A very wise Indian man once told me, while explaining daylight savings time: Only a white man can cut one foot off the top of a blanket, sew it on the bottom of the blanket, and think that the blanket is longer. There is still only 24 hours in a day…