Daylight Saving Time Linked To Heart Attacks 240
jones_supa (887896) writes "Switching over to daylight saving time, and hence losing one hour of sleep, raised the risk of having a heart attack the following Monday by 25 percent, compared to other Mondays during the year, according to a new U.S. study released on Saturday. By contrast, heart attack risk fell 21 percent later in the year, on the Tuesday after the clock was returned to standard time, and people got the extra hour of sleep. The not-so-subtle impact of moving the clock forward and backward was seen in a comparison of hospital admissions from a database of non-federal Michigan hospitals. It examined admissions before the start of daylight saving time and the Monday immediately after, for four consecutive years. Researchers cited limitations to the study, noting it was restricted to one state and heart attacks that required artery-opening procedures, such as stents."
Re:Sleep -1? (Score:5, Informative)
Our biological clocks don't care about our artificial, human-made clocks.
Re:A simpler cure (Score:5, Informative)
Surely this isn't linked to the time people go to bed and rise, but the amount of sleep they get.
So to reduce the risk of a heart attack, just get more sleep
The is how "morning people" have been misunderstanding "night owls" for centuries. Here's why you're wrong: I cannot go to sleep on demand. I can wake up on demand, thanks to my alarm clock, I can stay up later than my body wants me to, but I cannot make my body go to sleep any earlier than it wants to (without addictive drugs).
So, yes, if you fuck with the clocks like an inconsiderate fucking fucker, I'll lose an hour of sleep. Nothing I can do about it. And since it takes me a few days to adjust to getting up 1 hour earlier (the norm is only 1 day per hour), I miss an hour's sleep for a few days after the clock change.
Re:Sleep -1? (Score:2, Informative)
Here's an even better solution: stop making people wake up an hour earlier because they have to get to their jobs that suddenly begin an hour earlier for no particular reason.
The only plausible reason for having DST in the modern world is so that people can get up with the dawn to go to their jobs. But with it beginning so early in the year, on the first day of DST most people have to get up before the dawn, which is just awful. I don't have any hard evidence to back up this idea, but I bet if you moved the DST start date to the end of April (and the end date to the end of August) there would be a lot fewer heart attacks and a lot less complaining.
Re:Enough of the stupidity (Score:3, Informative)
Going to die anyway (Score:5, Informative)
I'll let TFA speak for itself...
"The overall number of heart attacks for the full week after daylight saving time didn't change, just the number on that first Monday. The number then dropped off the other days of the week."