How Your Body Adapts to Daylight Savings Time

The time that SO many people look forward to is nearly here!! Time to turn the clocks forward!! True, they don’t like losing an hour of sleep, but they LOVE having the extra daylight time. Hence the name Daylight Saving Time (DST).

Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1784, “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” He noted, during his time in France, that theParisians saved money on candles by rising earlier to use the morning sunlight. However, it wasn’t until 1895 that George Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist (a person who studies insects), suggested what we know today as DST. Hudson liked the idea of having a little daylight after he was done with his work day to look for and collect insects. Still, it was Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada to become the first city in the world to establish and use DST on July 1, 1908.

Europe, Russia and the United States followed and all had adopted DST by 1918 in an effort to add more daylight hours to conserve energy resources. However, many countries abandoned DST after World War I and did not return to it until World War II. (Note: DST has nothing to do with farmers or farming!) The Uniform Time Act standardized DST in 1966.

Some people don’t like the “fall back, spring forward’ changes and argue that it has significant impact on the economy, social relations, and our health. What you need to know is that your AMAZING body is fully capable of dealing with it. While time shifts can affect our natural body rhythm the actual amount ofdaylight remains the same no matter what time the clock tells us it is.

What’s more your body was meant to adapt. It’s built to change. It’s ability to adapt is one of the most AMAZING things about your body!!! Adaptation is one of the five signs of life!! (Assimilation, growth, excretion, and reproduction are the other four.) So YES, as long as you are ALIVE, you should and can ADAPT!!

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