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(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Daylight Saving Time Is Bad For Worker Health




Photo Credit:  ©2014 Jon L Gelman, All rights reserved
Every year,  the time change swing mandated by Congress alters the clock we follow. Our bodies will suffer and accidents will happen and fatalities in the workplace will increase. The cycle is about to begin yet again as  Daylight Savings Time is about to end.
Today's post by Mike Nudelman is shared from businessinsider.com
Daylight saving time (DST) is about to end, and an interesting thing that you might not realize is how such a small shift in our time can have a large impact on our body clock and our health.

These negative impacts of daylight saving time even cost us real money in lost productivity.

DST starts at 2:00 a.m. (the clock gets turned forward to 3:00 a.m.) on the second Sunday in March and ends at 2:00 a.m. (the clock gets turned back to 1:00 a.m.) on the first Sunday of November.

It was enacted during World War I to decrease energy use. Benjamin Franklin first advocated for the practice in 1784 because he noticed that people used candles at night and slept past dawn in the mornings. By shifting time by an hour during the summer, they would burn fewer candles and not sleep through the morning sunlight.

The debate still rages as to if this time-switch does save energy, but along the way we've seen signs that it has negative effects on our health and the economy.
Surprising health impacts

Transitions associated with the start and end of DST disturb sleep patterns, and make people restless at night, which results in sleepiness the next day, even during a "Fall back" period, since when we Fall Back, we might have trouble adjusting to going to sleep "later" after the time change.

This sleepiness leads to a loss of productivity and an increase in "cyberloafing" in which...

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