AI Article Synopsis

  • Daylight saving time (DST) changes the clock by moving it forward one hour in spring and back one hour in fall, which can mess with people's sleep and health.
  • A study looked at how DST affected death rates in 16 European countries from 1998 to 2012 and found that fewer people died in spring right after changing the clocks, but more died in fall.
  • The study also found a pattern where deaths were lowest on Sundays and highest on Mondays, which was the same all year round for people over 40.

Article Abstract

Daylight saving time (DST) consists in a one-hour advancement of legal time in spring offset by a backward transition of the same magnitude in fall. It creates a minimal circadian misalignment that could disrupt sleep and homoeostasis in susceptible individuals and lead to an increased incidence of pathologies and accidents during the weeks immediately following both transitions. How this shift affects mortality dynamics on a large population scale remains, however, unknown. This study examines the impact of DST on all-cause mortality in 16 European countries for the period 1998-2012. It shows that mortality decreases in spring and increases in fall during the first two weeks following each DST transition. Moreover, the alignment of time data around DST transition dates revealed a septadian mortality pattern (lowest on Sundays, highest on Mondays) that persists all-year round, irrespective of seasonal variations, in men and women aged above 40.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9659560PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34704-9DOI Listing

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