As the time for the clock change draws nearer, many bemoan the impending months of darkness, while others welcome the opportunity for an extra hour of sleep, finally not having to get on the bus in pitch blackness. 

Daylight Saving Time (DST) was originally invented in 1918 to save fuel during World War I. Initially called “war time,” Daylight Saving Time was primarily used during times of emergency, rather than stopping and starting each year like clockwork (pun intended). DST also benefited farmers, as they now had an extra hour of daylight in the evening to tend to their crops.

 Centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote a lengthy tongue-in-cheek essay proposing an earlier model of DST, wherein people go to bed with the sun and rise with it the next morning, suggesting outrageous methods to wake up his entire town and ensure they went to bed on time. Such methods included taxing candles and curtains (which at the time would have effectively rendered control of light impossible), locking shops at sunset, not allowing anyone except emergency workers off of their own property at night, and even ringing church bells or firing cannons in the street to see that no one remained asleep past sunrise. 

While the proposal of such measures was intended to be satirical and never acted upon, the modern use of DST has similar intentions, which are quite unnecessary with the modern inventions of electricity and alarm clocks. However, Daylight Saving Time was not even in common use until well after the advent of electricity in 1880. Despite its increasing obsolescence, DST now dominates over half the year, rather than only being used in emergencies. The future of Daylight Saving Time remains a highly controversial topic. Some people are in support of it, either to leave the system as it is or to activate DST permanently. Others are against DST and are in favor of abolishing it. In reality, DST has both pros and cons. 

As well as simple annoyance, DST has a  profound effect on both physical and mental health. The change in time at the beginning and end of DST can be likened to jet lag, the exhaustion and messed-up sleep schedule caused by a change in time zones. However, while jet lag is temporary, the effects of daylight saving time are often long-lasting, as the time changes every few months. This abrupt change every few months disrupts our circadian rhythms, the brain’s natural sleep-wake cycle. 

Speaking of sleep, it’s common knowledge–especially among sleep-deprived Dragons–how important sleep is to almost every organ in the human body. Cognitive function is one of the most important things to have while in school, and it’s also one of the first things to vanish after a bad night’s sleep. After just one night of poor sleep, people often find simple tasks difficult, are unusually irritable, anxious, or depressed, or are unable to concentrate. This is because during sleep, the brain is highly active as the body repairs itself, fights infection, and in adolescents, grows. As such, sleep or a lack thereof affects the body and the brain’s ability to process events and memories from the previous day. A persistent lack of sleep can eventually lead to cardiovascular, neuropsychological, and metabolic diseases, like diabetes. 

Many factors can lead to sleep deprivation, but during the transition to DST, people lose an average of forty minutes to one hour of sleep. While this may sound insignificant, even an hour of lost sleep can take its toll on the mind and body. The unnatural extension of daytime delays the production of melatonin, a chemical produced by the pineal gland in the brain, which signals to the rest of the body that it’s time for bed. Thus delay in melatonin production makes it harder to fall asleep at the same time as one normally goes to bed, which is why children are famed for saying, or  squawking, “But it’s still light out!” Their brains are not yet telling them they should be getting tired.

 On the flip side, during the later months of DST, it is still dark outside in the morning when it’s time to get up for the day, so it isn’t truly time to “rise and shine.” Similar to how the brain uses the sunset to detect bedtime, the brain uses sunrise to detect wake-up time. The optic nerves sense the incoming daylight, triggering the release of cortisol and other hormones, which cause a natural awakening. When the clocks move forward, “morning” comes before sunrise, and this process cannot occur as effectively, causing reliance on alarm clocks to rouse people in the morning. Alarm clocks, while effective, are not the best wake-up calls as most startle the brain awake from deep sleep without allowing for gradual lightening of sleep, leaving the person groggy, rather than refreshed and alert. This jolt from peaceful slumbers to wakefulness often causes people to fear (which is the mind killer), and has even historically led to spontaneous heart attacks. 

However, DST is not entirely bad—there are some benefits associated with it. Most notably, the extra hour of daylight encourages many to spend more time outside, which itself carries many health benefits. Sunlight promotes the production of Vitamin D, and can improve bone health. Time outside can also lead to the production of serotonin. Serotonin is one of the main neurotransmitters associated with mood. Presence of this chemical in reasonable quantities is associated with happiness and good mental health, while a deficiency can lead to depression and other psychological disorders. 

Getting up early, which is essentially what happens during DST, has actually been linked to some improvements in productivity and happiness. Some studies suggest that morning larks burn more fat than their late-sleeping counterparts. Productivity is also boosted, particularly in those who are more energetic in the morning. Rising with the sun is what humans evolved to do, making early rising more “natural” than sleeping through the sunrise. 

The end of this year’s Daylight Saving Time is drawing near, and the DST debate rages on, with an end nowhere in sight. And while Daylight Saving Time has its pros and cons, the clocks will continue to spring forward and fall back–taking us with them every year

Information Retrieved from: National Library of Medicine, Wikipedia, JSTOR, Sleep Foundation