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Comment by nv-vn | Hacker News Reader

>A 2014 study showed that the hour of sleep lost when switching to DST can increase your risk of a heart attack by 25%

I highly doubt that one less hour of sleep on one day of the year can affect that risk by so much. If that were the case, I assume the risk of heart attack would be much higher than it is now.

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It's 25% higher on that day. For all that statistic tells you though, it might just be bringing forward a heart attack you would otherwise have had the following week.

Sure, and going out on a rainy day probably increases your chance of being struck by lightning by 10000%.

1.25*(a really tiny risk of a heart attack on a given day)

This same numerical trick happened when the WHO classified red meat as a carcinogen "in the same category as" cigarettes, and it was stated that it increased your risk of some cancer by ~50% (or something), but the baseline risk is so low that it's a lot less dramatic than it sounds.

This. When I asked a doctor, who was suggesting 'a certain med would reduce chances of some cardio incident by some 10s of percent' (I don't remember, specific details), as to what is the base percent if would be affecting, he sort of evaded the answer.

It's also assuming that people get up an hour earlier. I'm sure a lot of people don't set alarms on Sunday and get a full night's sleep.

A 25% increase of a really low number is also a really low number, and quite frankly these numbers are low enough that it's all probably within a margin of error.

Yes, that's true. Just the way it's stated seems to imply that it's not specifically on that day but for an extended period of time.

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