Sleep is paramount to our health. Should we ditch daylight saving?

One of those systems is the glymphatic system, a recently discovered waste clearance pathway in the brain that allows toxins to be drained away in sleep.

“There’s evidence that if sleep becomes disrupted, or of an inadequate duration, there could be an accumulation of these toxins like beta-amyloid, for example, which is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Rajaratnam.

Keeping social time (the time on our phones and watches) closer in sync with the sun’s cycle of light and dark better suits our circadian rhythm. By making sunset later, daylight saving time pulls social time and sun time further apart.

Rajaratnam said more and more studies show an out-of-whack social and body clock worsens sleep, lowers life expectancy and decreases cognitive performance.

Lighting the way: How to adjust to daylight saving time

For those seeking to adjust smoothly to daylight saving, it all comes down to light. Some might be able to throw back a sleeping pill to force an early bedtime, but Rajaratnam recommends a gentler approach.

Loading

“Shift your sleep time by a small amount, by a quarter of an hour or half an hour, rather than trying to shift it by an hour,” he said. “Increase your morning light exposure to get your clock to shift as rapidly as possible.”

Avoid caffeine, nicotine and alcohol in the hours leading up to bed for the best chance at quality sleep. Setting up a smart globe “light alarm” that turns on in the morning or getting out into the sun as soon as you can will help.

Kids and especially teenagers, whose circadian rhythms are already naturally set later than adults, should dim the lights and ditch screens in the hour before bed.

“We have evidence that adolescent circadian clocks may be even more sensitive to the effects of light in the evening and so it’s important to try and minimise that exposure to light,” said Rajaratnam. “We know there is a strong bidirectional relationship between sleep and mental health as well, which is critical in those adolescent years.”

Should we abolish daylight saving?

Dr Thomas Sigler, an urban geographer at The University of Queensland, is an advocate for daylight saving time because of the lifestyle and health benefits of brighter evenings. He finds it “ludicrous” that Queensland doesn’t observe daylight saving and believes timezones need a shake-up.

“Drawing an arbitrary line from London may have worked 100 years ago, but it’s no longer useful for people in Brisbane who leave the office in darkness 350 days a year like I do,” he said. “Australians are active people, right? Having usable daylight is critical to be able to bicycle, to surf.”

Sigler said the brief up-tick in cardiac arrests and traffic accidents after clocks change are far outweighed by a plunge in car crashes and fatalities in following months, as roads become lighter later in the day.

Loading

Sigler welcomes the progression of the Sunshine Protection Act in the US, which would rearrange timezones so most states are effectively in daylight saving time permanently without the need to change clocks. But Rajaratnam said most international peak bodies disagreed with the bill because it would permanently misalign our body clocks with the sun’s movement.

“Expert bodies in sleep around the world have recommended the opposite, which is to stay on non-daylight savings time,” he said.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.