Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans (usnews.com)
- Reference: 0179301700
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/16/2317241/permanent-standard-time-could-cut-strokes-obesity-among-americans
- Source link: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-09-16/permanent-standard-time-could-cut-strokes-obesity-among-americans
> "We found that staying in standard time or staying in daylight saving time is definitely better than switching twice a year," senior researcher Jamie Zeitzer said in a news release. He's a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University in California. For the study, researchers estimated how different national time policies might affect American's circadian rhythms -- the body's innate clock that regulates many physiological processes. The human circadian cycle isn't exactly 24 hours, researchers noted. It's about 12 minutes longer for most people, and it can be changed based on a person's exposure to light.
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> "When you get light in the morning, it speeds up the circadian cycle. When you get light in the evening, it slows things down," Zeitzer said. "You generally need more morning light and less evening light to keep well synchronized to a 24-hour day." An out-of-sync circadian cycle has been linked with many different poor health outcomes, researchers said. "The more light exposure you get at the wrong times, the weaker the circadian clock," Zeitzer said. "All of these things that are downstream -- for example, your immune system, your energy -- don't match up quite as well." Most people would experience the least circadian burden under permanent standard time, which prioritizes morning light, researchers found.
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> The research team then linked its analysis of circadian rhythms to county-level data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to see how each time policy might affect people's health. Their models showed that permanent standard time would reduce obesity nationwide by 0.78% and stroke by 0.09%. Those seemingly small percentage changes, when played out across the national population, would mean 2.6 million fewer people with obesity and 300,000 fewer cases of stroke. Permanent daylight savings time would result in a 0.51% drop in obesity -- around 1.7 million people -- and a 0.04% reduction in strokes, or 220,000 cases. Either move would help American health. "You have people who are passionate on both sides of this, and they have very different arguments," Zeitzer said.
The findings have been [2]published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-09-16/permanent-standard-time-could-cut-strokes-obesity-among-americans
[2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2508293122#sec-1
Every parent wants this (Score:5, Insightful)
Every parent hates having to deal with their kids sleep disruption for days afterwards - it is the absolute worst. Please kills DST.
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Sounds like you have been blessed with near perfect kids so far if sleep changes for DST were "the absolute worst". When I look back on raising my kids there were many issues that came up, yet I have zero memories of DST being one of them.
Parents removed the last ban in 1974 (Score:2, Insightful)
It was banned in 1974 and caused a bunch of fatalities by parents dropping their kids off in darkness. [1]You can read about it. [washingtonian.com]. Yeah DST sucks...but so does going to work in total darkness in Nov/December. Which sucks worse?....IDFK. I wasn't alive for the first one. I think I'd go for no timechange like Arizona, personally, but I do kinda get why some felt it wasn't worth it.
For those who aren't parents or forgot what it's like...you're FUCKING TIRED nearly every morning dropping your kids off. (I l
[1] https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/
Re:Parents removed the last ban in 1974 (Score:5, Informative)
That was a switch to permanent "Daylight Savings Time", so in northern area it can stay dark until almost 10am.
This is to get rid of DST all together and just remain on Standard Time. It has the added benefit of not staying light until after 10pm in the summer. The only benefit to DST is right now it would be getting dark around 7pm instead of 8pm. But I'd give that up in a heart beat to have normal sleep patterns.
There are many studies that people's internal clocks follow standard time, it's almost like the people who figured it all out knew what they were doing.
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People who like doing 'summer time' live near the center of their respective time zones, people who don't like it live near the edges.
The real problem is we are all still hung up on 8-5 being office hours, and 9-5/6 being retail hours. That was needed in the early industrial era because people had to make plans based on expectations, even thru the later 20th century if you were out and about you needed to be able to assume shops would be open etc.
Now you can discover a business hours with your smart phone a
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Why didn't the schools just start an hour later?
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+1 Obvious.
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If everything moved an hour later, what's the point of DST in the first place then? The original point was that permanent DST means parents were dropping kids off in the dark since sunrise was an hour later. Moving everything one hour later is then the same thing as standard time. So just keep standard time.
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I agree--pick one and stick with it. Change all the other work/school times biannually, if the locals want to. Stop messing with people's sleep (health).
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while dst is a dumb idea, it never caused any noticeable problem with my kids which are now healthy, happy and well functioning adults. if you tell us a bit more about your traumatic experience you might receive free internet advice from random strangers about what you have been doing wrong. parenting is an important job to get right.
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LOL kids respect sleep time with daylight savings? Are you a German and is this one of those cultural punctuality things that no one in the rest of the world can comprehend?
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*without
It's been done (Score:5, Interesting)
Brazil scrapped DST a few years ago - did the research check against their data?
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Wikipedia has an DST article with a map dividing the world into countries that have DST, have previously used DST and never used DST. Some countries like Australia, Canada and even USA (Hawaii, ...) are divided. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> Brazil scrapped DST a few years ago - did the research check against their data?
Who cares? I have lived without time changes for a little less than half my life. I HATE how I feel for about 2 weeks twice a year now that I am back with the insane people who think that they can legislate the value of Pi. Stop being stupid.
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> I HATE how I feel for about 2 weeks
To be clear, are you suggesting you suffer jet lag for 2 weeks from a 1 hour timezone change? You never go out in the evening do you... I'm not picking on you, I'm genuinely curious. A 1 hour difference in sleep is like ... a daily occurrence for much of the world. The medical issues are due to the stress of not recognising the time change throwing out your plans the day after.
No mention of latitude (Score:3, Insightful)
If you live nearer the equator then daylight savings is a nuisance, however if you live nearer the poles then daylight savings is great. Hence the polarised view on the issue. Where I live there is nearly 6 hours more sun light in summer than in winter each day.
Any research like this is questionable if it doesn't account for latitude and the effect different latitudes have in the research results,
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Australian southern states have daylight savings, while the northern states don't. I think they've always had that arrangement.
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I hadn't noticed that but it makes sense given the significant range of latitudes Australia covers.
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> If you live nearer the equator then daylight savings is a nuisance, however if you live nearer the poles then daylight savings is great. Hence the polarised view on the issue. Where I live there is nearly 6 hours more sun light in summer than in winter each day.
>
> Any research like this is questionable if it doesn't account for latitude and the effect different latitudes have in the research results,
I suspect this "research" will be dubious for many reasons. Mainly caused by someone who started with an answer and went looking for a justification.
The latitude is very, very important. Up here in the dreaded south of the UK there's an 8 hour difference between the hours of daylight you get in midsummer and midwinter. In June and July you have full daylight from 5 AM to 10 PM (DST) and in December and January you only have daylight from 8 AM to 4 PM (GMT). This is for the UK in general, if you lived up
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Maybe its driven by the dea of 7-10 hours sleep, at certain bedtimes, regimented (is that even the best way)? Besides a flush of the brain fluid (forget the scientific name), where your brain shrinks in volume and fluids flush out waste, and some duty cycle like reasons that mitchondria need rest (mitochondria leakage signals sleep), what other reason is there for sleep? Some animals sleep for very little time. Wouldn't it be nice to be awake almost all the time? Sleep is an inefficent use of time. At the s
Re:No mention of latitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who lives closer to the pole, it's still a nuisance. They've tried to sell it by linking it to helping farming, saving power, or saying it's for the children.
Here's a hint: Farmers, especially dairy farmers, hate the changes. Power savings are theoretical at best. Oh and if you really want to help the children install sidewalks and pay for crossing guards.
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A nuisance it may be, but that doesn't make it great. Honestly I don't give a shit about farmers. It's just really nice to have more afternoon sun after work to enjoy life. Which raises a new point... we all agree changing the clocks suck, but let's start a new argument: I propose permanent summer time, because fuck standard time and dark afternoons.
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that is just stupid, because it means noon is never when the sun is directly overhead anywhere.
If you want more time in the afternoon why not leave the clocks and centuries of language alone, and just convince people to make business hours 7-4 rather than 8-5?
Re:No mention of latitude (Score:4, Insightful)
when you live near the poles 1h shift won't change much... your day last couple months... same night...
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I have never had a satisfactory answer as to why people can't just adjust their personal schedule to whatever suits them. If a community wants the schools to open an hour later, let them do it. No need to change the time for everyone.
Re:No mention of latitude (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Canadian, I absolutely hate DST. Keep it on standard time. If you want your workers to get up an hour earlier in the summer, change the hours you're officially open! That's all you're really doing anyway.
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Why standard time? Why not keep it on summer time?
As for changing the hours you're officially open, I'm happy for you that you work in a company or job that lives in isolation and does not engage with vendors, customers, or other businesses, but for many your solution is a non-starter.
Even me who works from home has my work hours dictated by meetings I support with others. We can't all live in a social bubble.
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Daylight saving time (which is oddly named, if you think about it, because it) kicks in in the summer, when high latitudes have more daylight than they know what to do with.
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All of it was done to save fuel for WWI -- by the Germans and the Americans and the British. Standard time feels more normal to me - which is odd because I always as a kid loved it being light later. Now? I'd rather have standard time and go to work earlier so I have light in the evening.
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> If you live nearer the equator then daylight savings is a nuisance, however if you live nearer the poles then daylight savings is great. Hence the polarised view on the issue. Where I live there is nearly 6 hours more sun light in summer than in winter each day.
At the poles it's even more useless. In the winter, the sun rises around 7AM and sets around 4PM, and in the summer, it rises around 4AM and sets around 9PM (standard time). Daylight savings means it rises at 5AM and sets at 10PM. It's pretty useles
If you want to make a difference (Score:2)
pass a law that bans rotating shift work. You can't get much worse than a week on day shift, then a week on evening, then a third on graveyard.
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Maybe true from a health perspective; shift workers with families like it because they get see their kids during waking hours every couple weeks and/or make phone call or visit a bank branch without having to lose sleep over it.
I did second shift for a little while once and it was the worst. Everyone you know is off to work or school just as your getting up, you are leaving for just when they are all getting home and they are all mostly in bed by the time you get home.
Come on now (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not in favor of DST but be real. Americans will generally always have bad health, no matter what time of day it is.
No agreement (Score:3)
100% of Americans want the time changes to go away. The problem? 50% think DST should become the permanent time, while the other 50% think it should be non-DST. That's the real problem.
Personally, I'd rather have the extra hour of daylight in the evening. If it's dark in the morning then schools can start an hour later (which some in my region actually did for a week last year).
Either way, if it ever goes permanent, you're going to have half the population unhappy with what became permanent.
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I was surprised to hear complaints in the first place. I always thought clocks forward in summertime is a good idea.
Re:No agreement (Score:4, Interesting)
The best solution I heard was to switch to permanent standard time, but businesses and local governments would be (and always were) free to have "summer hours" (where hours of operation shift back one hour, the opposite of the way we currently shift clocks) and "winter hours." So instead of forcibly making everyone change their clocks, give them the choice to change their hours.
Re: (Score:3)
> free to have
That's a nice lie pushed by people who are promoting standard time. No one is "free" to set the times of their business hours. Those hours are dictated with interactions with suppliers, customers, other businesses, heck may even be contractually specified in the case of lease agreements, and in general they are at the mercy of the society they are in.
The only solution is mandating a unified change.
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First, I'm not promoting standard time. Personally, I'd prefer DST all year. But that's irrelevant except to point out that you shouldn't make assumptions. Second, your "problem" can be solved easily by having "core hours" for businesses that need to deal with others. But there are plenty of business that could set their hours however they please.
Re: No agreement (Score:2)
Locations on the west side of time zones have daylight an hour behind the eastern sides; each is always on DST or not relative to the other side.
In my dream world we're all on Standard time and locations that have large seasonal variations in sunrise/sunset times can just adjust school/government/store opening times to suit their local solar times.
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Count me in the apparently 0% of the population that likes the switch. It maps well to my body's natural cycles and that keeps me awake, alert, and happy throughout the day. My only gripe is that the fall back is a couple of weeks too late and spring forward is a couple of weeks too early -- it should be closer to the equinox than it currently is.
Second-best to keeping the switch would be year-round standard time, possibly with a culture of shifting business hours in the summer.
Year-round daylight time is a
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The US has 6 timezones already. It couldn't be much worse if you just let each state decide.
I opted out of this bullshit years ago. Permanent UTC now. Even that has leap second nonsense. Contemplating switching to TAI.
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> 50% think DST should become the permanent time, while the other 50% think it should be non-DST. That's the real problem.
> Personally, I'd rather have the extra hour of daylight in the evening.
Are you attached to the local numbering on a 12 hour clock? Do people find the current situation preferable to (as an example) standardizing on UTC+0 globally, and then working through whatever semantic and work-shift accommodations are needed to keep things working at a local level?
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Right, but if we're never changing the clocks, it doesn't matter what offset from solar time we choose. We could make it five hours, nine hours, twelve hours. People would just adjust their schedules to match the daylight hours, irrespective of the numbers on the clock. So why not make it zero hours, since that's what the numbers mean in the first place? 10 AM is "the tenth hour before midday". 3 PM is the "third hour after midday".
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> 100% of Americans want the time changes to go away. The problem? 50% think DST should become the permanent time, while the other 50% think it should be non-DST. That's the real problem.
> Personally, I'd rather have the extra hour of daylight in the evening. If it's dark in the morning then schools can start an hour later (which some in my region actually did for a week last year).
> Either way, if it ever goes permanent, you're going to have half the population unhappy with what became permanent.
Split the difference, halfway between, that way no one is happy!
Back in yesteryear, the family farm I worked on used to have its own "timezone" that was literally the split between DST and standard. The main purpose was to keep chores consistent for the dairy throughout the year. But it also led to lots of fun family fights over what time something was, which was a nice bonus to keep things lively.
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> 100% of Americans want the time changes to go away.
I don't even notice it anymore ever since my clocks change automatically.
Time zones. (Score:2)
The majority of Americans cross time zones for more than twenty-four hours at least once a year. The majority for pleasure trip. With a large percentage of people crossing multiple time zones. A significant percentage of people work jobs which don’t let them have a constant sleep schedule. All of these things affect people more a twice yearly time change that makes it easier for most people to have access to more mood boosting in daylight. People complaining about this just like to complain. Don
Re: (Score:3)
> The majority of Americans cross time zones for more than twenty-four hours at least once a year.
This is incorrect.
61 percent of the population does not take a "long distance" trip in a year.
Incidentally, this defines "long distance" as "50 miles". Of the "long trips", 58% of those are less than 125 miles away. So only 16% of people travel over 125 miles away in a given year. Less than 125 miles is relatively unlikely to cross a time zone. Growing up my family would regularly make 300 mile trips but still not cross a timezone.
Yeah... no (Score:4, Insightful)
What's gonna stop obesity among Americans isn't permanent standard time. It really, REALLY isn't that.
A good start would be making healthy food that isn't 1,000,000 calories per pound, and not made of fat and sugar mixed in unknown chemicals affordable. And taxing the living shit out of junk food. And getting people to stop eating supertanker-sized servings.
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You will never make fresh food cheaper than manufactured food, because the latter is shelf stable and can be made from poor quality ingredients which are cosmetically unsalable. Ultra-processed foods are cheaper everywhere.
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You also have to prepare healthy food which, as I've commented here on /. more than once, won't fly because Americans (literally) would rather die than cook something healthy. It also doesn't help that even so called 'healthy' celebrity chefs douse all their foods with a huge amount of "EVOO" -- sorry, you can still get fat on healthy food. I'm living proof of that (LOL).
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You are exactly right. I see non-curated videos of people all over the world. It is clear that American food is engineered to cause excess fat regardless of how much you eat. It is disgusting.
Conspiracy theory: They do it so that even poor people are fat so that everyone can point and say: see? they are fat, they are not starving.", despite the fact that indeed, they ARE starving.
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Mounjaro and Wegovy might though.
Re: Yeah... no (Score:1)
"A good start would be making healthy food that isn't 1,000,000 calories per pound..." How can food be healthy without vitamin P 238?
golf (Score:1)
The class that plays golf on weekdays wants to have more daylight time at the latter part of the day.
Our opinions are irrelevant.
As for the school opening times, taking care of the children is a job for the tradwife.
Could - the ultimate weasel word (Score:2)
Pigs could sprout wings and fly. I don't think it's gonna happen, but it could
Every year, the same stories... (Score:2)
TIme shifts are bad, stop it. Same refrain every year. Why don't the politicians just do it?
As for the continual discussion of standard time vs. DST: Why is it so hard to just let things happen? If people want more light after work, then they can go to work earlier. For shift workers tied to a clock, they can talk to their company about when shifts start and end. How many businesses today are really 8-12/13-17? Even for schools: The schools can change their schedules, if the parents want them to.
A bullshit study (Score:2)
It's total bullshit as so many people happily travel across timelines, either for work or holidays.
And how few people sleep during the weekend on exactly the same times as during weekdays?
Most of my (working) life I've been doing odd shifts and I never saw it as a significant problem.
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> It's total bullshit as so many people happily travel across timelines, either for work or holidays.
Holy shit, what travel agency do I need to call to get that vacation package?
Headline is misleading (Score:2)
Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans. True
Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans. also True
What's causing the problems is the twice a year time changes.
Agree on one, stick to it and move on.
Please keep the sun overhead at noon (Score:1)
Please keep the sun overhead at noon. You can just ask businesses and government to open an hour sooner. If you don't think they would do that, what makes you think they wouldn't just counteract your change to the clock by changing their hours to the actual time they want.
Back and forth (Score:2)
Is this biannual back-and-forth solely because businesses/schools won't change their starting times? Why not let people wake normally and then have the extra time for whatever? If you think it's dangerous for walking students, then change their start time; why is everyone else dragged onto the roller-coaster?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't like sunsets at 4:20? Wait until you spend a winter in Fairbanks, Alaska!
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Daylight savings Time slightly increases in person shopping. That in turn increases the value of commercial real estate.
Every time we try to do away with daylight savings time out come the retail lobbies and more importantly the commercial real estate owners lobbies and that's the end of that.
Every aspect of your life is shaped and warped by big business.
Dump That DST Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Solar noon is the only thing that matters.
Noon should be based on solar position only. Ever. That means no DST. Dump that DST bullshit.
P.S. No matter how we choose to set the clocks, it is probable that 50% of the population will have some form of issue with it. Science! Not whims.
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How many timezones are you going to dedicate to making sure that the clock is aligned with solar noon? What's your margin of error? 1 hour? 30min? 15min? How wide is your timezone?
Vienna and Amsterdam are in the same timezone because it's easier for people to interact when they share a common time. They are 50minutes apart in solar noon. Who would benefit from defining new clocks that keep the sun overhead at noon?
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Obviously 24 time zones yields a maximum error of 30 minutes, if done correctly. There are over 30 time zones, a phenomenon I've never quite understood.
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As someone whose primary reference time comes from a sundial, I agree 100%!
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> Solar noon is the only thing that matters.
I've never understood this argument.
The "standard work day" is 9-5, which means that the middle of the day is 1pm. And therefore it makes sense to have permanent summer time I guess.
I'm an early bird so it's already dark when I go out in the mornings (Northern Europe). I always hate the October clock change because it just takes away the sun for that brief period when I would still see it in the evening after work.
This year "civil twilight" will go from 07:34-18:42
One More Datapoint... (Score:1)
...revealing that DST and the clock shift is one of the stupidest fucking things those dipshits in government endorse. The claims aren't that abandoning that ridiculous fiasco is going to end obesity and unhealthy dietary and life choices. The claim is that the extra stress from fucking around with the fucking clocks causes an increase in catastrophic or slow corrosive health outcomes. There are lots of other negatives related to jacking around people's sleep schedules, like a pretty well documented increas
Not marketing and eating junk? (Score:2)
One of these days they'll realise this. Abandoning DST will make a tiny difference compared to what health diet and exercise would achieve. But this would decimate the junk food industry, and treating exercise like a luxury for the middle class and for those with the time for it is going to cost dollars. So obesity it is.
Compromise? (Score:2)
Why don't we just move the clocks 30 minutes and make it permanent? This seems like a no-brainer.
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't we always have noon when the sun is the highest in the sky, and stop fucking around with the time standard?
Changing the time standard is stupid! (Score:2)
Changing the time twice a year discriminates against all of us sundial users! "High noon" is by definition when the sun is directly overhead. That shouldn't be 12:00 some days, and 11:00 other days! I also object to going permanently on daylight savings. If you want people to go to work an hour earlier in the summer, change their schedule, not the time standard!
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[1]https://neildegrassetyson.com/... [neildegrassetyson.com]
[1] https://neildegrassetyson.com/essays/2003-03-stick-in-the-mud-astronomy/
Just get rid of it. (Score:2)
It won't make any difference though! The whiners will just move on to whine about something else. It is what they do.
What about traveling? (Score:1)
Since a one hour time change is deadly, what are the effects for people that travel for recreation or employment?
Going to from the east coast to California, or Hawaii? Texas to Europe, or NYC? Seattle to Bermuda? Europe? Asia? etc. How many people are more likely to die because they travelled to another time zone?
Re: Things that would do this, better (Score:1, Flamebait)
"A six-day work week"
Fuck you in the ass. Dry. One day is plenty with all our technology and resources. Six days the idiot says. Fuck. YOU.
Re: (Score:2)
I assume the GPP was thinking along of the lines of cutting "full time" to 36 hours a week, and moving to six hour work days.
I am not endorsing or advocating that but I can see how some might like it. It would align the work day to the school day, which could simplify the childcare for many two income households for one thing.
It might be a good work/life balance choice for many but it would suck if you have a long commute to add another episode of windshield time to each week.
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People need to learn what various foods contain and what they do to the bodt, things high in carbohydrates and sugars/corn syrup/HFCS are a guarantee to make people obese if consumed daily, two diets come to mind to avoid this Adkins & Keto I like to switch from one to the other or a mix of the two, the key to losing weight is to burn more calories than consumed, exercise helps
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"A six-day work week." you first.
"Compulsory fitness levels." you first.
"Ban on tobacco products." Create another class of drugs for people to grow in their back yard and deal on the street.
Anymore wise ideas, Einstein.
Re: (Score:2)
> Ban on tobacco products.
Yeah, let's make cigarettes cool again!