You’ve probably seen or heard reminders online or on the radio to set your clocks ahead one hour as we approach daylight saving time on Sunday, March 10 at 2 a.m. local time.
The extra hour of daylight lasts until November 3 of this year, when clocks are turned back one hour.
While some prefer the extra hour of sunlight, others like Irene Shone think that changing the clock twice a year is dangerous for our health. She created a petition through Change.org asking the federal government to permanently stop daylight saving time, and nearly 75,000 Canadians had signed on as of Friday.
“Advancing clocks one hour is not the norm, it’s something people are forced to get used to,” Shone told CTVNews.ca. “That adjustment period feels like a kind of jet lag.”
Shone, who lives in Brampton, Ont., but works in business development for a major Toronto-based food company, said daylight saving time has a negative effect on our circadian rhythms (the natural cycle our bodies go through each 24 hours) and that Changing our internal clocks can worsen certain illnesses, in addition to disproportionately affecting people with depression and seasonal affective disorder.
The Canadian Sleep Society, a national organization that promotes healthy sleep through research and medical professionals, agrees with Shone.
“Not only does it (daylight saving time) induce lack of sleep from its onset in the spring, but it imposes later darkness during the summer, favoring delayed bedtime, social jet lag, and greater loss of sleep.” dream,” the organization said in a statement on its website.
“Canadian children, students and workers have to wake up in the dark and arrive at school or work without adequate exposure to daylight. This challenges the key role of morning light in circadian alignment and deficits. of sleep”.
The American Medical Association, the largest organization of doctors and medical students in the United States, agrees. In November 2022, he called on the US government to end daylight saving time and permanently move to standard time.
“For too long, we have changed our clocks for the sake of daylight, incurring risks to public health and safety,” the association wrote in a news release. “Eliminating time changes in March and November would be welcome. It’s time we woke up to the health implications of clock setting.”
In November 2020, the Ontario government passed the Time Amendment Act, introduced by former Ottawa West-Nepe People’s Party MP Jeremy Roberts. However, Ontario’s attorney general said the government would only implement the law if Quebec and New York state followed suit.
After the legislation was passed, Roberts, who was defeated by NDP candidate Chandra Pasma in the 2022 Ontario general election, said one of the benefits of ending the semiannual change is promoting consumerism by providing residents more daylight hours at night.
Shone said she is frustrated by pressure from businesses and politicians in both Canada and the United States who want longer days and for daylight hours to be permanent standard time.
She maintains that any monetary benefit gained is not worth the impact on people’s physical and mental health.
“We’re supposed to rise and fall with the sun,” he said. “We need to protect our sleep and our biology, and having artificial clock changes doesn’t help people’s well-being.”