HERE & THERE COLUMN

  Do You Miss Daylight Savings Time?

  Folks are saying they would rather have Daylight Savings Time all year around instead to pushing the clock forward in the spring and turning is back in the fall.
  There is strong sentiment about not using Daylight Savings Time all year around.
  Hearing comments that folks don't like it getting dark by 4:30 in the afternoon and having to use more electricity for lights from 4:30 on.
  Daylight Savings Time (DST) starts at 2 a.m. (the clock gets turned froward to 3 a.m.) on the second Sunday in March and ends at 2 a.m. (the clock gets turned back to 1 a.m. on the first Sunday of November.
  The negative impacts of daylight saving time tend to cost us real money in the need for additional lighting costs and some say there is also lost productivity.
  Others say this small shift in our time has a large impact on our body clock and our health.  Transitions associated with the start and end of DST disturb sleep patterns and make people restless at night which results in sleepiness the next day....in the case of the fall back period we might have trouble adjusting to going to sleep later.
  The American Journal of Cardiology points out that during the first week of DST (in the late winter) there's a spike in heart attacks and they say that's because losing an hour of sleep increases stress and provides less time to recover overnight.
  Some point out that having DST all year around could decrease deaths from traffic accidents.
  As to the use of more electricity because it becomes dark earlier some analysts at the US Department of Energy found that extending DST in 2005 saved 1.3 trillion watt-hours of electricity.
  Comments given us when asked about the end of DST included, "leave the clocks alone," and "because our government thinks they know better when we should wake up and what is good for our bodies."  I'm still wondering why we keep this clock changing thing.....why not let the light cycle naturally and allow our bodies to respond accordingly.