A few days ago, we turned the hands of the clocks back an hour and returned to standard time, which we also call “winter”. Most experts say that we should save it for health.

Morning sunlight is most important for maintaining circadian rhythms, sleep cycles, and overall health. Neuroscientists and sleep experts say that without the sun, we can fall into circadian dysregulation – the body’s internal clock is out of sync with the solar and social clocks.

There is also a favorable trend for permanent daylight savings time, especially in the context of the energy crisis. But the desynchronization will become permanent and cause many health problems, sleep experts say. But how can one hour out of 24 have such a significant impact?

The brain has an internal clock. It measures the time every day so that the necessary things happen in the body at the right time – the work of the heart, metabolic processes, hormonal fluctuations and sleep. It’s just that most of us have an internal clock longer than 24 hours.

Fortunately, the Sun jumps to the rescue by sending signals to specialized receptors in the eyes. Every morning, the sun adjusts our internal clock to match the 24-hour day.

Likewise, when the sun goes down, the lack of light allows the body to produce hormones such as melatonin, which induce sleep. But just as morning light turns back the internal clock, light from any source turns back the evening.

In spring, when we enter daylight saving time, we suddenly break this important connection between the brain and the sun, based on the 24-hour solar day.

When we are on Standard Time, noon is when the Sun is usually at its highest point, “solar noon.” But for most of us, the clock determines how we spend our lives—when to wake up, when to work, when to go to bed. In March, when we switch to summer time, the daytime schedule shifts by an hour.

We wake up in the dark, and when we leave work, there are still many hours of sunlight. But the Sun does not move. Solar noon, synchronized with our internal clock, is the same time as in days gone by. The daily schedule and solar noon are no longer synchronized.

Unfortunately, the clock in your brain doesn’t move as fast as the clock on your wrist or phone. It takes at least a day to adjust to the time change. And some need even more.

One of the main problems with the time change is that it affects sleep. The body is not yet ready to fall asleep an hour earlier. And the morning calls the old wake-up time. But the alarm clock sends us to work an hour earlier. And so I cut the dream off at both ends.

The sudden change in time each spring is associated with more heart attacks and strokes. The number of road accidents and other causes is also increasing. But here’s what would happen if we switched to daylight saving time all year round:

The summer solstice, usually around June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, is the longest day of the year. It takes about 15 and a half hours to Bucharest.

The extra hours of daylight after work can be nice, but they stress your internal clock even more. Even if we lose sleep, the summer light that arrives earlier in the morning helps us.

But with daylight saving time permanent, other problems arise on December 21, the shortest day of the year, which will last just over eight hours. We’ll wake up in the dark and the sun won’t rise until we’re at work.

And since we woke up a few hours before the sun, it will be even less able to help us. And the internal clock will not reset without help. It will remain installed for just over 24 hours, putting us out of sync with the solar day.

Each day these extra minutes will add up, and over time your internal clock will drift further and further away from the real one. As a result, the constant summer period will cause disruption of the circadian period, putting people at even greater risk of depression in the winter months and disrupting the production of important hormones such as melatonin.

Chronic desynchronization of the internal clock exposes us to other risks as well – loss of sleep, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, bad mood and even some types of cancer. Melatonin has oncostatic properties that can slow the spread of cancer.

Experts say that by abandoning the transition to daylight saving time, we will eliminate the short-term problems of changing the clocks twice a year.

More importantly, the internal clock would remain synchronized with the sun. The risks of long-term health problems will be reduced. Checking the clock does not change the duration of lighting during the day.

So, by following the standard time, we will have light at the right time for better health.

Sources: The Washington Post, Astronomical Observatory