You're doing it wrong. If you wake up Monday morning (March 13) sleep deprived from losing an hour’s sleep, you did it wrong. The system is designed to remove one hour Saturday night. Perhaps, like most hipsters, you have hygiene issues. Sleep hygiene being a very important topic. The fix is to set your alarm clock and wake up at the same time on our days off. Sleep deprivation affects all shift workers at some time. Perhaps, instead of calling it Daylight Savings Time, we call it Feel Like a Shift Worker Day. If DST isn't relevant to you, at least let’s have a day to honour every doctor, nurse, emergency service worker and barista. Before you blow your weekend and end up cramming your homework Sunday night, set your clocks ahead Friday afternoon.
The author of the 2009 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, that people like to cite this time of year, mentions a five per cent greater risk of having a heart attack immediately after the ‘spring ahead’ clock change. He also mentions a better way of changing the clocks maybe by 15 minutes Friday before the change. How about 20 minutes? The author does not mention why these people are so sleep-deprived in the first place. Are they emergency services personal, military, health care workers, interns, residents or students? Instead of helping these people that are mere minutes away from an acute health incident. We hate on the time change.
You say that there is still the same amount of daylight anyway? That's fine. The magpies and the crows will still sing their songs at sunrise. Sunrise now being four a.m.
Remember those halcyon summer days when you got home from work or school and still had enough to daylight to play outside, cut the grass, drive to the lake and sit on the deck? How many Canadian sports teams have had an advantage with an extra hour of practice? If it's not relevant to you because your face is in a screen 24/7, the clock will change automatically without you noticing anyway.
Correct, they are not removing an hour of daylight. Edmonton is a winter city after all. They are taking away an hour of summer from you every non-daylight savings day!
Rod Matthews, St. Albert
