Living on the wrong side of a time zone can be hazardous to your health | Hacker News Reader

Living on the wrong side of a time zone can be hazardous to your health

washingtonpost.com

59 pointsdmckeon53 comments

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Previously posted at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19701806

Thanks to HN poster acqq for finding the source paper:

http://www.oseagiuntella.com/resources/GM_SLEEP_june2017.pdf

"Sunset Time and the Economic Effects of Social Jetlag Evidence from US Time Zone Borders

Osea Giuntella, University of Pittsburgh, Fabrizio Mazzonnay, Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI)"

> People on the late side of sunset across U.S. time zones were 11 percent more likely, on average, to be overweight and 21 percent more likely to be obese. Diabetes was more prevalent, and the risk of heart attack increased by 19 percent. Breast cancer rates were slightly elevated, too — about 5 percent higher than average.

And yet many people advocate the adoption of permanent DST, which would make that even worse for everyone...

It looks like there is no good answer. I used to think syncing time with the naval clock with the appropriate offset for location would be great, so that the system drifts such that noon is always highest point in the sky would be great, but it has too many consequences (like when traveling and an hour isn’t an hour, or just syncing with other people)... so we’re stuck with a practical but less than ideal solution.

What is wrong with standard time?

Depends on your location I guess. Sun sets at 4:20 in the winter in Seattle under standard. So if we had to choose just one, I think many people would rather push that to 5:20.

But do you want a 9 AM sunrise?

As someone who lives in Seattle: I genuinely don't care what time the sun rises.

Since I work from home it doesn't bother me anymore. But I used to hate commuting before the sun rose.

I'm stuck at the office either way. Give me the evening daylight so I can enjoy my off-work time.

Sounds good!

I think I'd prefer a 9 AM sunrise in the winter over the 4:11 AM sunrise that we'd currently be having if we were on standard time in the summer.

Absolutely. I'd pick DST just to avoid this alone.

People who play golf or engage in other outdoor activities like to maximize the amount of daylight hours after work. Instead of adjusting their work hours they have society and the government adjust the clock for everyone. Ideally the clock would be left alone but not everyone's employer is willing to allow for shifting one's work hours. Also schools aren't willing to seasonally adjust their hours so parents who want to maximize afternoon and evening daylight hours desire clock shifting.

DST was introduced in most countries during WW1 and/or WW2, to save fuel [1].

It _might_ be the case that golfers are the ones arguing to keep DST now, I havn't really noticed.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#History

Believe golf is usually played at dawn, which always kept it out of my purview.

Completely depends. Different people have different preferences. Different locations have different weather benefits for time of day. When I played golf I played during twilight almost exclusively.

This is only when it involves dueling with one's opponent

We could make that work with the tech we have these days. For example, meeting people at point A from points B and C, agree upon a time, then use google maps to tell you when to depart to arrive at point A at the agreed upon time.

You haven't taken into account the difference between mean solar time and apparent solar time. The system you describe is essentially the old local mean time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_mean_time.

On the other hand that would meant that people in Spain are worse off than people in Portugal or England. Is that the case?

Yes: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/22/spania...

I can't argue with the data for the population, but just anecdotally I definitely am more active during DST. The fact that it's warmer during this period definitely helps some, but I mostly go to an indoor gym so it's not as big of a factor as someone who runs outside. It's just harder for me to be motivated to leave my house at 7 PM when its been dark for 90 minutes vs. if I've still got 2 hours of daylight.

Yes, but consider what this would mean during the winter. It would still get dark significantly earlier than in summer, and it would likely be dark when you wake up.

Worse than twice-yearly upheavals?

As someone who would prefer to stay on regular time I’d love to agree with you. Unfortunately, I don't think that argument holds. Switching to DST will make the sun set even later, but it also will make it rise later and move people's morning appointments back.

People tend to schedule meetings based on the time of day, not the sun. A 9am DST meeting is the same, sun-wise, as an 8am non-DST meeting.

Speaking as someone from a non changing timezone, (Phoenix area) I can tell you I am much better rested than I was living where the time changed. I dont care if you fix the time at DST or ST, not changing the time is better for you IMO.

You're of course also from a quite southern area.

https://outline.com/PG6H78 for those of you (like me) who just get a blank page.

Just a quick glance at the map on that one and you can see it is "stupid data mining tricks." Colorado (skinny) and Georgia (fat) could account for all of the difference. There's a half dozen ways of falsifying this, but as its Elsevier, we'll never know.

I can't see the map (paywall).

One thing I'd want to check is the difference across time zone boundaries. There's not much of a difference between western Georgia and eastern Alabama, other than time zones; do they have different health outcomes? (Or, if you want to say that maybe Georgia has more money than Alabama for public health, look at a state like Tennessee or Kentucky where the time zone boundary isn't the state boundary.

Using the "web" thing takes me here:

https://nypost.com/2019/04/23/living-on-the-wrong-side-of-a-...

You can see there are huge cultural differences in a couple of places that could account for all of it. I agree, checking the local difference is a decent way to falsify this stinker. Bootstrapping a few states in and out of the data set would do so also.

I know we all love the low-brow dismissal and hating on social science and paywalls (I certainly do!) but this comment is terribly worthless.

It's easy to find the paper (it's even linked below), and they of course do attempt to correct for many covariates including geographic locations and socioeconomic effects.

Europe has a timezone spanning quite a large area, I looked up 2 small towns at each side at almost the same latitude and compared their sunrise/sunset times for today (according to Google):

Niš Serbia; 43.3209° N, 21.8958° E: Rise 04:52, Set 20:12

A Coruña Spain; 43.3623° N, 8.4115° W: Rise 06:53, Set 22:14.

A whole 2 hours difference!

Spain is more of a night owl culture anyways.

It is, by the wall clock. But is it by the sun?

> Niš Serbia; 43.3209° N, 21.8958° E: Rise 04:52, Set 20:12 A Coruña Spain; 43.3623° N, 8.4115° W: Rise 06:53, Set 22:14.

People get surprised that in Spain the lunch hour is around 13:30 instead of 12:00. But when you take into account the sunrise/sunset times it corrects part of the difference.

Maybe a fix: reduce working hours (school time, etc.). That will save lives and facilitate a more healthy population.

We have the data. We know the causes of why people are dying. News makes us more worried about terrorist attacks, that kill really very few people and have no impact beyond the publicity that news provides than the real risks to our health.

- https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha... - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/01/perfect-sto... - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/diesel-e... - https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-overdos...

We don't need to do everything perfectly. We do not need to panic. But, we can improve a lot how we deal with risks to our health.

I just wanted to greet you from Niš :-) .

On topic, we would really like to have later sunrises and later sunsets. This is with DST. During winter when it is much colder it gets dark around 16:00, and subsequently colder. I personally believe we are one time zone behind and should probably align with Bulgaria and Greece, but the industry is Western oriented and it would just cause mismatch with Central and Western Europe and even greater difference with US. Maybe even more important with ex-SFRY republics between which communication and travel is very lively.

Interesting correlation in the US: except for Pacific Time, it seems the populations in each time zone are more dense on the sunrise side. Aren't these health issues and economic outcomes typical of rural America?

I used to live in a highrise with windows that faced west. Since we were above the trees and there were no other buildings of similar height nearby, I got full afternoon sunlight. Summers were miserable and I suffered from insomnia greatly. Even blackout shades couldn't fix things due to the intensity of leakage around the edges. I suffered from many health issues, most likely due to poor sleep quality, during that time. It also harmed my performance at work. Things improved quickly when I sold my condo and bought a house with my bedroom facing south east.

I occasionally reside in two cities, about a thousand km apart east-west but in one time zone. Schedules between them diverge by about 1.5 hours: shops opening and closing times, public transport schedules, etc. Pretty much the only thing keeping them strictly in sync would be TV programming—which however is staggered across the country anyway so it's not insurmountable.

So, if your country has set times for schools, business etc in a time zone despite the difference in sun time, you probably should ask whose bright idea that was.

That's exactly what time zones are supposed to solve. Sounds like your country has multiple time zones, but doesn't want to call them that.

Sounds more like my country has fewer time zones than fifteen-degree chunks of longitude. Which didn't prevent people from living their life by the sun.

We do here in Norway; I am in the GMT zone at 6 degrees east, while in the extreme east of the country, they're squarely in GMT+2 at 30 degrees east.

All of the country is in GMT+1. The difference between standard and solar time is quite pronounced, especially during DST.

Difficult for me to sympathize in this case, considering how you managed to squeeze both Sweden and Finland away from oil and fish, and how I almost wept when paying for bus between cities in Norway.

Fun fact - we offered the Swedes commercial rights to sectors in the North Sea as a trade for Volvo stock; the Swedish secretary of commerce basically said 'Hell, no!" at the last minute and backed out of the deal.

Edit: It wasn't the Secretary of commerce but the Volvo general assembly which turned the deal down. My bad.

Well, Volvo should probably outlast those oil reservoirs and the oil dependence. And possibly the fish too.

One of the few nice things I can say about living in Indiana is how it sits on the western side of the eastern timezone.

There was light outside when I was outside. It got dark when it was time to go to bed.

Now living in the Bay Area, I feel when the clocks shift in November, it is getting dark at like, 5PM! I am still working at that time. I do not like having to go about my evening when it is pitch black outside, it is super uncomfortable.

Georgia is the same and I like it on the western side of the Eastern TZ. I would much rather have light after work than nothing. Maine would not be a good place. I felt the same way at the equator 6-6 then darkness.

Longer periods of light increases insulin resistance and blood glucose levels.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518141416.h...

As it often happens, the paper is ignoring people with DSPD aka night owls. We almost never see sunrises, and I wish we had a permanent DST to have later sunsets and longer daylight.

I'd much rather have some extra daylight in the evenings, especially in winter.

There is no free lunch or free daylight. You end up robbing the morning of light to get it in the evening. Even down here in Georgia schools often start late during the winter when overnight freezing temperatures creates black ice on the roads. Seasonally adjusted school hours would help avoid this but that has a cascading effect on parent's schedules which in turn can cause issues for employers. Tinkering with the clock just moved problems around, advantaging some groups at the expense of others.

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