On Nov. 7, when everybody was commanded to “fall back” in obedience to Daylight Saving Time like so many stalks of corn, flattened by the derecho, it didn’t actually fool anybody.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: when you got up in the morning at 7 am, on Nov. 7, did somebody in your house say, “Yeah, but it’s really 8 a.m.?” Because it FEELS like 8 a.m. Anyone who watches the news knows that the human brain is capable of believing anything, no matter how bizarre. But there’s no sense lying to the body. The body knows better.
The body doesn’t require alarm clocks or schedules or Daylight Saving Time. It already has a clock. It’s called “circadian rhythm,” an internal clock biologically linked to the movement of the sun which, contrary to what some people’s brains believe, is not controlled by Daylight Saving Time. According to researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, writing in the 2008 October issue of Current Biology, our circadian rhythm changes in four-minute intervals, curiously precisely the time it takes for the sun to cross one line of longitude. For this reason, it should come as no surprise that the government agency in charge of regulating Daylight Saving Time is none other than the Department of Transportation. Before there were decent roads or trains or air travel, there was no need for time zones. People naturally got up with the rising sun and went to bed with the setting sun. (The telephone probably had something to do with it, too.)
We can’t claim DST is solely responsible for screwing up our biological clocks. We should also blame whoever it was who invented fire—and all the clever variations on fire such as the electric light bulb, Netflix, video games, etc.—all of which relentlessly conspire to keep us awake at night, long after the sun goes down.
Of course, the worst disruptor of our natural rhythms is work. Work forces us to wake up early when all that is good and holy would persuade us that more sleep is the proper course of action. When people retire, they may discover their natural circadian rhythms return. One day, they wake up (whenever they feel like it) and wonder in a detached sort of way if this might be Tuesday. “What is Tuesday anyway?” they ask themselves. And go back to sleep.
DST was originally utilized during World War I and World War II as a means of conserving energy resources, each time suspended when war was over. It was permanently formalized in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act. But like people’s bodies, people’s brains didn’t much like DST either. Between 2015 and 2019, 29 states proposed legislation to end time changes. Those German researchers show that no matter how many times we spring forward and fall back, humans never seem to adjust. And as far as saving energy, the US Department of Energy conducted a study in 2008, concluding that sticking to just one time could save about 0.5 percent of all electricity used in the country—or enough juice to power 100,000 homes for an entire year.
If somebody figures out what to do about Daylight Saving Time, I hope they let me know. Maybe on Tuesday (whenever that is).
Living in Iowa: Daylight Saving Time isn’t fooling anybody
November 18, 2021