According to a neurobiologist, staying on summer time all year round could disrupt our biological rhythm and promote certain health problems.
France is switching to daylight saving time in a few days, and this could be one of the last times. The European Commission has decided to put an end to the time change in 2021. Each Member State must choose the time it prefers, in France, the results fell on March 3: the population wants to stay on daylight saving time. ‘summer. For our health, however, we should favor winter time, according to a neurobiologist interviewed on the site of our colleagues from 20 minutes.
More heart attacks and accidents
Since 1998, the European Union has changed the time twice a year to save energy. If the change of time is on the breach today, it is because it has not made it possible to significantly reduce energy consumption, and on the contrary causes health problems. A study presented by the American College of Cardiology in 2016 showed a 25% increase in the risk of heart attack on the first Monday after the time change. The number of road accidents would also be on the increase, due to the decrease in luminosity.
Winter time: closer to our natural rhythms
Removing the time change could be a solution… If we adopt the correct time! Asked by 20 minutes, neurobiologist Claure Gonfrier, vice-president of the French Society of Chronobiology, explains that staying on summer time would have harmful effects on health. “The ideal time, from a chronobiological point of view, is solar time, specifies the researcher. Which is already not the time at which we live, since we live at GMT + 1 [GMT correspondant à l’heure du soleil au méridien de Greenwich] and even at GMT + 2 in the summer, two hours later than solar time. This schedule creates a two-hour social jet lag: our biological schedules and our activity schedules are off. awakening. Ultimately, this risks disrupting our circadian cycles, the alternation between waking and sleeping.
Disturbed sleep is bad for your health
“It has been observed for many years that the populations located the farthest west in their time zone, and which are therefore the furthest from solar time, present the most metabolic disorders, sleep disorders, mental health disorders, cancers and biological rhythm disorders in general”, underlines Professor Claude Gonfrier. Teenagers and night owls/late risers would be the most exposed to these problems. For early risers, the risk of seasonal depression hovers: by staying on summer time, the sun will rise at 10 am during the winter. In the meantime, on March 31, the clock will have to be moved forward one hour!
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