Letter: Daylight Saving Time more hurtful than helpful

Charles Czeisler, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham And Women’s Hospital, explained the reasons for the danger in an interview.  Maybe you are willing to accept a week-long 6% increase in fatal accidents caused by the DST “spring forward.”  Do you also know there is an additional long-lasting increase in heart attacks, strokes and suicide?

Daylight Saving Time is like pretending to live in the wrong time zone, one zone too far east.  Sunlight timing has a powerful effect on your hormones, and the negative hormonal effect of pretending to live farther east than you do increases the risk of breast, lung, stomach and other cancers by 13-30%.  If Congress mandates permanent DST, these increases will cover all time zones.  Dr. Czeisler notes that the general public does not favor this change but that Congress is being heavily lobbied by the golf and other lucrative entertainment industries.

Indiana is special. The legislature chose to pretend that we are in the Eastern time zone in 1972.  Most county governments, except for twelve, were not wise enough to reject Eastern Standard time year round when they had the chance.  So, we already have the 13-30% rise in cancer risk, which will double if Congress makes the deadly deal.  The healthiest (and best for lowest energy consumption) choice is to be on permanent Standard time in the Central time zone, the zone in which we actually live.  Also called Solar Time, which the legislature additionally mandated by law in 1972 for counties in NW Indiana and SW Indiana for reasons unknown to me.  The rest of the state has been pretending, and reaping the increased cancer risk since that time.  Another change was made about ten years ago in which some of the formerly Solar Time counties, including Dubois, changed to Eastern time. 

Did the Indianapolis professional sports teams lobby the legislature, waving free tickets and such, claiming economic benefit for the state if they could just be on Eastern time so that home games could be chosen for major network broadcast?  Follow the money, and enjoy your current summertime 26-60% increased cancer risk (13-30% in summer for twelve CST counties).

And, don’t blame your clock.  It is humans with political power, in and out of office, who have told the clocks what they should tell you about the time of day. 

David Dudine, Jasper