Why moving the clocks forward winds your body up

You’re more likely to have a heart attack, crash your car and get a longer jail sentence. As countries can now choose to opt out of Sunday’s spring ritual...

AS WE brace ourselves to lose an hour in bed on Sunday at the start of British Summer Time ( BST), here’s something else to ruin your sleep: Cloxit, a row that threatens to ‘wind up’ people even more than Brexit.

For the past 103 years, British clocks have gone forwards an hour in spring, then back an hour in autumn to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

And, since 2001, all the other 27 EU states have harmonised to what is known as Daylight Saving Time (DST) for summer (moving clocks forward in spring) to enable their citizens to enjoy longer, lighter evenings.

But this week, the Time Lords at the European Union voted to allow EU members to abolish these bi-annual changes, should they wish.

From 2021 onwards, EU countries can opt to stick to permanent summer time, or switch back in October to permanent winter time — just like Narnia.

Whether we’re in or out of the EU by then, the move reopens a bitterly entrenched British row over whether we should stick to GMT all year, move an hour ahead in summer — or even push the entire British time system an hour or two ahead of GMT all the year round.

It revives battles involving farmers and sports enthusiasts, divides generations and sparks claims about rocketing death rates. JOHN NAISH considers the contentious history, and future, of DST.

WHO INVENTED DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME?

BENJAMIN Franklin, the first U.S. ambassador to France, proposed Daylight Saving to ridicule the lazy French.

In 1784, he wrote a satirical letter to the Journal of Paris suggesting that the clocks be moved forward in summer so that citizens might get up earlier and see more daylight. He also demanded a tax on window shutters, the rationing of candles and an alarm call provided by cannon fire.

More than a century later, in 1895, a New Zealand astronomer and naturalist George Hudson proposed the same idea on purely selfish grounds. He wanted the extra evening light in summer to help him study insects.

Then in 1907 an English builder, golfer and horological [measurement of time] obsessive, William Willett, separately suggested it after taking a ride early one morning and noting the shuttered windows and drawn curtains as people slept through the glorious summer dawn.

One year later, on July 1, 1908, after a local businessman named John Hewitson petitioned the local council, the residents of Port Arthur, Ontario, were given permission to turn their clocks forward by an hour in order to enjoy longer, lighter evenings. Other Canadian towns soon followed.

It was, however, darker motives that led Imperial Germany to adopt DST on April 30, 1916.

Increased summer daylight could keep its war machine toiling more efficiently. It would also reduce fuel used for indoor lighting, thereby increasing supplies for the military.

The following month, Britain followed suit. In fact, Parliament had been debating the idea since 1909, though the changes had been vigorously opposed by farmers who wanted lighter summer mornings in which to do their chores, rather than longer, lighter evenings. Finally in 1925, BST was made permanent in recognition of the fact that our waking hours imperfectly match seasonal daylight hours.

WHO ELSE ADJUSTS THEIR CLOCKS?

SOME one billion people, just a seventh of the global population, adjust their clocks annually for DST. This includes most of Europe and the U.S. (apart from Hawaii — see below — and most of the desert state of Arizona whose residents prefer darker, cooler evenings).

The practice is dictated mostly by latitude: locations close to the Equator (such as Hawaii), for example, experience little seasonal change in daylight hours, so there’s no need to shift.

In 2012, Russian politicians decided to switch to permanent summer time, hoping it would improve citizens’ well-being by giving them longer days in summer.

However, this created stress and health problems for people in northern Russia where the mornings remained darker for longer during the harsh winter months as a result.

There was also a rise in earlymorning road accidents in 2012 compared to previous years. Permanent winter time was introduced in 2014.

WHY IS THE EU CHANGING NOW?

IN THE wake of anti-DST lobbying by the likes of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Parliament last year launched a survey which ‘showed a large majority in favour’ of abolishing DST.

In fact only 4.6 million Europeans took part in the online survey — three million of them German who dominated the pro-abolition camp. In Britain just 13,000 people bothered to vote.

In total, around 80 per cent of the study’s respondents wanted to abolish DST.

In Britain, opinion polls have shown very different results. A 2015 poll had the ‘fors’ and ‘againsts’ pretty much level-pegging, while a quarter of the public didn’t care.

All the surveys show significant age splits, with the over- 50s opposed to the palaver of bi-annual clock changes, and the under- 24s either pro- DST or not bothered.

Analysts at YouGov suggest that young people are more likely to own a smartphone that changes the time automatically, minimising inconvenience.

(Alternatively, cynics might say that people under 24 may have little experience of getting up in the morning.)

CAN IT REALLY FIGHT CHILDHOOD OBESITY?

SIR Winston Churchill believed the greatest benefit of DST could be seen on ‘the thousands of playing fields crowded with eager young people every fine evening throughout the summer’.

Indeed, according to a study of 23,000 children by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, longer summer evenings may be our best weapon against an epidemic of child obesity.

Increasing daylight hours may also boost the mood of a nation. The more sunshine a population receives, the less likely it is to suffer depression, Canadian researchers found in 2003. ‘A city’s depression prevalence could be reduced by simple public health measures such as going to Daylight Saving Time year-round,’ they said.

However, there are also a number of studies that indicate significant health risks associated with losing an hour of sleep. A study in this month’s Journal of Clinical Medicine of more than 110,000 people, found that heart attacks increase significantly in the fortnight after the clocks go forward. The first Monday morning is peak danger time, but generally it seems those sudden earlier mornings can stress unhealthy hearts.

A 2018 German study of autopsy reports found an increase in deaths, mainly suicides and traffic accidents, in the fortnight following the introduction of DST. Research suggests that accidents at home also spike because of the disruption to the body clock, causing stress and disorientation.

In addition, the physiological stresses caused by losing an hour in bed may even raise people’s risk of developing multiple sclerosis, according to Italian biochemists in a study this month.

Other consequences of the lost hour have also been noted. Psychologists at Lancaster University last year discovered a rise in the number of patients missing doctors’ appointments after the clocks change. Many people get disoriented for up to a week.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Washington found that judges dole out longer sentences after the clocks go forward. Sleep deprivation may make them short-fused and vengeful, says the report in the journal Psychological Science.

There have been far fewer studies into the impact of an extra hour in bed and no strong evidence it is harmful (as most would attest). TOM UTLEY IS BACK NEXT WEEK