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Should the U.S. Ditch Daylight Saving Time? Some AMA Delegates Say Yes

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Most physicians supported scrapping Daylight Saving Time and making Standard Time permanent year-round during a discussion on Sunday at the American Medical Association’s Interim Meeting of the House of Delegates.

Across most of the country, clocks fall one hour backward in November and jump forward one hour in March except in Hawaii and Arizona, where Daylight Saving Time is not observed. But Standard Time is “the biologically correct time,” argued Anna Yap, MD, speaking on behalf of the Resident and Fellow Section (RFS) and explaining the section’s resolution asking the AMA to support eliminating Daylight Saving Time. Yap spoke during a reference committee hearing at the meeting, which is also being livestreamed.

Year-round Standard Time allows for more light in the morning and less light at night. And Standard Time is better suited to humans’ circadian rhythm than permanent Daylight Saving Time, explained Jessica Cho, MD, a sleep medicine and internal medicine physician, speaking on her own behalf.

“Having sunlight in the morning naturally helps us [to] be in the correct 24-hour circadian clock,” Cho said. Moreover, “the acute time change” from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and hospital admissions, the section said in its resolution, citing a 2020 American Academy of Sleep Medicine position statement, which supports eliminating seasonal time changes. The same statement also highlighted a link between the change into and out of DST and “sleep disruption, mood disturbances and suicide.”

Roughly 50 years ago, Congress approved legislation establishing a 2-year pilot of permanent Daylight Saving Time in an effort to conserve energy, which began a trial period of using only Daylight Saving Time in 1974. After the change was implemented,”multiple children died,” Yap said. (The AASM position statement confirmed that deaths of school-aged children in the mornings between January and April increased after the pilot started. Those deaths may have been related to darkness lingering longer in the morning as children were on their way to school, among other possible explanations, the AASM noted.)

After one winter, the country reversed the policy and returned to the status quo — Daylight Saving Time for a portion of the year and Standard Time for the remainder.

A bill currently before Congress, the “Sunshine Protection Act,” seeks to once again make Daylight Saving Time — which Yap called “categorically the wrong time” — permanent. (AASM agreed. While applauding the idea of eliminating “biannual time changes,” the academy warned the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) of the potential health risks of making Daylight Saving Time permanent.) The bill passed the Senate but has yet to pass the House.

Christopher Clifford, MD, an alternate delegate for the RFS, said nearly 150 physicians sent a letter to Congress in June explaining the harms of permanently switching to Daylight Saving Time; that letter appeared to delay the bill in the House, but now the measure seems “dangerously close to being passed,” he said, urging the AMA to act quickly.

Patrick “Pat” Strollo, MD, a delegate speaking on behalf of AASM, backed the RFS’s idea, urging the AMA “to stand by the science … and support this resolution.” Cyndi Yag-Howard, MD, a delegate from the American Academy of Dermatology who spoke on behalf of the Dermatology Section Council, also voiced support for the idea. For dermatologists, who worry about “predictable sun exposure,” maintaining one standard time pattern may help to decrease the incidence of skin cancer, she said.

Delegates speaking for the Medical Student Section and the American Academy of Family Physicians also supported the resolution, as did Gary Floyd, MD, speaking for the Council on Legislation. “Adopting the resolution … to support policy favoring permanent Standard Time would allow AMA to support [legislation] competing [with] Daylight Saving Time legislation if introduced in the House,” Floyd said.

However, Gary Gaddis, MD, PhD, an alternate delegate from the Academic Physician Section, speaking on his own behalf, took a different view. While there are “downsides” to Daylight Saving Time immediately after clocks move forward, there are also benefits, said Gaddis, an emergency physician in St. Louis, Missouri. For instance, in a country battling an obesity epidemic, having daylight in the summer stretch out allows more people to spend time outdoors exercising, he said.

There are a whole host of policy changes the AMA could advocate for that have “mortality benefits,” he noted. For example, physicians aren’t advocating for the evacuation of coastal cities despite knowing the likelihood of a hurricane impacting those areas. “Everything has costs and benefits. A balanced view of Daylight Saving Time shows that benefits outweigh the costs,” Gaddis said.

The full House of Delegates will decide this week whether to adopt the proposal.

  • Shannon Firth has been reporting on health policy as MedPage Today’s Washington correspondent since 2014. She is also a member of the site’s Enterprise & Investigative Reporting team. Follow

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