Scrapping twice-yearly time changes in Manitoba is a great move, but staying on daylight time instead of standard time is the wrong choice, says a sleep medicine expert — especially for students.
“We really need to rethink this,” said Dr. Michael Mak, psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
“Not having the change in times twice a year is a good thing. But I think as we progress into the winter months and have prolonged periods of no sunlight in the morning … that might lead to issues with academics and depression.”
In the dead of winter, sunrise might not happen until close to 9 a.m., which means “young people who are going to school are going to have to do so in pure darkness,” and that has potential health implications, Mak said.
The light people are exposed to in the morning stabilizes the body’s circadian rhythm — the natural 24-hour internal clock that regulates sleep-wake cycles and other biological processes.
“[It] gives us better mood and better energy. So we’re going to see an amplification of disturbed nighttime sleep, reduced total sleep time,” said Mak, clinical vice-president of the Canadian Sleep Society.
“I think it’s going to cause issues with attendance, it’s going to cause issues with sleeping in class and potentially more depression.”
Adults are affected by the lack of morning light, but “it’s much worse for adolescents,” he said.
For the first time since provincewide daylight time came into effect on May 12, 1963, Manitobans won’t turn their clocks back to standard time this fall.
Premier Wab Kinew announced Thursday that Manitoba has adopted permanent daylight time.
The decision was based on the results of a survey the province launched in May. Nearly 72,000 votes were submitted and 92 per cent wanted to see an end to seasonal time changes.
Among respondents, 58 per cent preferred permanent daylight time, which means later light in the evenings.
That’s counter to what we should want, Mak said.
“We want more light in the morning to help us get up and we want less late at night to be able to sleep well. This is the opposite. I think it’s a bad move.”
Studies on the effects of more light in the evening suggest there’s only moderate, if any, change in people’s activity, he said.
Rebecca Robillard, neuropsychologist and sleep researcher at the University of Ottawa, fully agrees.
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There’s no good reason for holding on to the practice of changing clocks, “but the critical point is which time do we stand to?” she said.
“All scientific bodies are really concurring and have been for quite some time, both in Canada and internationally, that really the time that we should stick to is standard time, which is the natural time that aligns with the natural cycle of the sun.”
Morning light realigns our biological clock and optimizes how we feel, whereas too much light in the evening suppresses our sleep hormone and leads to less rest, said Robillard, who is co-chair of the Canadian Sleep Research Consortium.
Daylight time is an artificial rearrangement of light, she said. We’re not creating more light, we’re just moving it — shifting it away from the natural cycle.
The biological clock not only regulates the sleep-wake cycle, but most of the body’s physiological functions that allow us to process information, digest food, be physically active and generally perform at our best, she said.
“There’s research to show that certain portions of the population, like older adults, kids as well, are more sensitive, because their biological clocks tend … to be a little bit more fragile.”
In addition to the mental health aspect, studies suggest a misaligned circadian rhythm is linked to increases in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and weight problems, Robillard said.
For kids, getting up on time for school is already really difficult, but for teenagers, whose bodies and brains are undergoing physical, emotional and cognitive growth that requires massive amounts of energy, it’s going to be even worse, she said.
She compares it to asking adults to wake up at 3 a.m. and begin work.
“It’s not in every area that you’ve got scientific consensus, but this is one area where there’s very strong consensus,” Robillard said.
“We sound maybe a little bit melodramatic when we’re talking about the effects of time change but … it does have those kinds of widespread repercussions. Standard time is the best solution for health and safety and productivity.”
To mitigate some of the impacts of the dark mornings, Mak suggests turning on lights immediately upon waking to mimic “to some degree” the effects of natural sunlight. And keep a consistent wake time every day, he said.
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“Your wake time is a proxy for your first light exposure, which sets your internal body clock for the next 24 hours.”
David Prerau, author of Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time, said the best option is the one that was already in place.
“The current system, which you guys are getting off, I think has the best of both worlds. It has the benefits of daylight saving time for most of the year, but it doesn’t have the big negatives of dark mornings,” he said.
Sticking with standard time means in summer the sun is up at 4 a.m. but everybody’s sleeping through it, Prerau said.
“That’s wasted daylight that’s much better used in the evening. That’s what happens when you have daylight saving time, spring, summer and fall — you take that hour of daylight in the morning that almost no one is awake for and move it for the evening, where everybody can continue to utilize it,” said Prerau, who served as a consultant on national time policies for both the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament.
Many counties have tried to make daylight time permanent but none have kept it in place beyond a few years, he said.
Losing an hour of sleep one day a year in order to put that into effect might be inconvenient, but it’s worth it for four months of sunrises, Prerau said.
Hannah Cabey, who was picking up her sons from a Winnipeg school on the day of Kinew’s announcement, said it was what she hoped for — permanent daylight time.
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“I am not a morning person, so it’s very selfish,” she said with a laugh, but added her sons love playing road hockey after school and being lighter out gives them that added benefit.
“But either way they chose, I liked the idea of not having [to change the clocks] because I think that’s the most difficult thing for families with kids — having to adjust the schedule two times a year.”
But Cabey’s husband, a morning person, preferred standard time.
