Update: “My thoughts on the Senate’s agreement on permanent Daylight Saving Time”

I’m a proponent of doing away with the clock changing. But I don’t agree with staying on Daylight Saving Time. Like Arizona, we should stay on Standard Time year around.

Paul LeBlanc, writing for CNN Politics Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Time isn't all sunshine

While there could be a debate in the House, there isn't one within the sleep expert community, which argues that permanent Daylight Saving Time is a bad idea.

​[…]

The Sunshine Protection Act? “You could just as well call it the Darkness Protection Act,” Dr. David Neubauer, an expert in sleep medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told What Matters.

“Nobody is creating more sunshine in this Act. It is simply stealing light from the morning, when we need it to reinforce our circadian clock, and adding it to the evening, when we really don't need it,” he said.

Neubauer isn't alone in his sentiment. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a statement following the Senate's passage of the Sunshine Protection Act warning that “making daylight saving time permanent overlooks potential health risks that can be avoided by establishing permanent standard time instead.”

The argument goes like this: During Daylight Saving Time, the clock moves an hour forward — so sunrise and sunset occur an hour later than before. This pushes the biological clock forward an hour as well. So, one might tend to go to bed later and have a harder time getting up in the morning.

​[…]

Bennett acknowledged the concerns of sleep experts, but called the potential shift toward permanent Daylight Saving Time “a worthy experiment — something we should try.”

“And if it doesn't work, we'll go back in two years.”

As I wrote in my last piece, ​“Congress tried a permanent Daylight Saving Time in the 1970s, but quickly reversed course on the move amid widespread public outcry over the switch. Maybe we should learn something from history.”“My thoughts on the Senate’s agreement on permanent Daylight Saving Time”.

#Opinion

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