Turning the clock back

On March 9, we sprang forward with our clocks and I wrote a column on the effects of the time change on our health and fitness. A few of the issues that I touched on were tied to our circadian rhythms. The impact of these rhythms, once they have been disrupted, where pretty dramatic and involved mood swings, fatigue and can even affect athletes' energy levels and overall performance for a short time.

In your brain, you have an area called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The SCN is your brain's timekeeper and can get out of sync over a 24-hour period. Within each 24-hour period, your brain and body need to undergo small adjustments to keep our bodies on schedule with our day and night environment. This circadian regulation can be affected by age, illnesses, nutrition, exercise and, of course, daylight-saving time.

Roughly seven months later, here we are falling back an hour. Does falling back an hour have any impact on our health or is that just a concern for springing forward?

There does not seem to be as much information on moving our clocks back as it relates to our health. Since the majority of studies have been done on the downside of daylight-saving time in March, it is not clear that adding an hour is harmful. It would make sense that getting that extra hour of sleep in the morning would help our circadian rhythms. Since on average, most people's circadian rhythms are closer to 24.5 hours, adding time to our day would make it easier for our bodies to adjust.

Here is the bad news, at least according to a number of studies on turning your clocks back in the fall. There seems to be a correlation to turning your clocks back with an increase in morning accidents. The primary thinking around why this happens is we tend to stay up later with the time change but few of us actually sleep in the extra hour. Most people are creatures of habit and their internal clock does not reset right away like the clock next to your bed. So if you are used to waking at 6 a.m., now your body gets you up at 5 a.m., and you have most likely stayed up later. This, for some people, will not adjust for two weeks, leading to lost sleep for a period of time after changing our clocks.

One of the reasons for changing our clocks back is also the reason it can have another rather negative aspect to our health. Since the days are shorter, we get less daylight. Many people are sensitive to Seasonal Affective Disorder, depression and loss of interest in everyday activities due to less daylight.

Depression and mood swings caused by Seasonal Affective Disorder are not the only symptoms that can arise. People who are affected by SAD also report fatigue, restless sleep and elevated blood pressure. Add the stress from the holiday season and now you have the time change, long dark days and holiday stress. No wonder many of us dislike this time of year.

Currently, there are about 70 countries around the world that have a time change. Not all the countries do it on the same day as the United States. How did this twice a year time shift start? Depending on who you believe, it was either introduced by our most famous U.S. inventor and great statesmen, Ben Franklin, or an Englishman named William Willett. It seems that in fact Willett was the first to bring the idea of moving the clocks forward in the spring.

Now, I do not want the truth to get in the way of a good story, so it is told that Willett was an avid golfer and didn't like his round of golf getting cut short due to darkness, so he convinced the British Parliament and the world to adopt the practice of daylight-saving time. Since golf is a great exercise, I guess it qualifies as a good reason. The odd fact here is even though England came up with the idea of daylight-saving time, it was Germany which first started the practice during the first World War.

It is pretty clear that turning the clock back and forward twice a year does seem to have a negative impact on our health. Both in the spring and fall, studies support the idea that there is an effect on our health, but it all comes down to your circadian rhythm which runs on a 24-hour cycle for plants, animals and humans. The physiological processes of our circadian rhythms help us set our sleeping and eating patterns. Circadian rhythms regulate body temperature, digestive function along with hormone production and cell regeneration on a daily cycle to keep living beings healthy, so changes to our rhythm will have an effect.

I personally believe we should standardize on a single time like Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe the spring daylight-saving time change. This would likely make life and our health less stressful in the spring and in the fall.

Judd Jones is a director for the Hagadone Corporation.