Abolishing daylight saving time could slash these life-threatening health conditions
Study suggests ending daylight saving time could improve our health
- Stanford Medicine researchers suggest that abandoning the twice-yearly clock changes for daylight saving time could significantly improve public health.
- Their findings indicate that permanently adopting standard time could prevent 300,000 strokes and reduce the number of people living with obesity by 2.6 million annually.
- These health benefits arise from avoiding disruptions to the body's natural circadian rhythm, which regulates essential functions such as sleep, hormones, and digestion.
- While permanent daylight saving time would also offer advantages, it would achieve only about two-thirds of the positive health outcomes compared to permanent standard time.
- Daylight saving time, which sees clocks set back in November, has been observed across much of the US since the mid-1960s, with some political figures, including Donald Trump, having previously lobbied for its permanent adoption.