It's good to at long last hear - and from the experts, no less - that daylight savings, so-called, is not necessarily - may indeed be far from - the unmitigated success story we've long been led to believe...
As TV3's 6 p.m. Newshub Nation the other night pointed out (and as it still does c/o its online edition https://www.NewshubOn-line.co.nz/home/lifestyle/2018/09/daylight-savings- etc) through reporter Alexandra Nelson's special report, daylight savings may in fact a whole lot to answer for (in various associated harmful side-effects)...- not that said item exactly framed it that way, but it effectively revealed as much.
Sleep Specialist Tony Fernando cited a whole bunch of 'functional issues' associated therewith, from increased risks of diabetes, blood pressure and heart problems especially amongst the less resilient, aging proportion of the population - 'when peoples' body clocks are not followed or are disrupted'. As therein mentioned (and otherwise oft-noted) the associated mood changes and impaired functionality also significantly affects judgment and reaction times...resulting in greatly increased incidents of accidents (a 30% increased risk, according to this report).
And who hasn't heard of NZ's appalling rate of workplace accidents (doubtless oftentimes from overworked and overstressed - and underpaid? - workers)?; which far exceeds that of other nations, incidentally, though that's doubtless just one part of the equation. But the slower reaction times and associated poorer judgment and decision-making long known as typical results of fatigue have many a time also been pointed out as part of the puzzle that's been New Zealand's long-term high number of road injuries and fatalities...resulting periodically - but not enough, in my humble opinion - in the occasional special official road traffic warnings thereabouts, though the incidence of associated road-signs has been heartening to see over recent years...
No, the human body is not a mere machine to be experimented with by all and sundry, though 'modern man' with his and her 'food' concoctions and other *chemicalized instruments has certainly done his/her darnedest! And that's not to mention the modern university, which, as I made my way through as a 'mature student' during the early-to-mid 2000s, I later reflected is certainly true to its darwinian philosophical underpinnings, effectively treating us, the students, as akin to either the beast or the 'bot (i.e. robot)...an animal or a machine, in other words. Rather than the glorious master-piece of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, All-Loving Creator.
Why they so conspicuously fail(ed) in their due 'duty of care' to the inmates therein (such as myself) as I/we wreaked merry hell upon my/our physical bodies by regularly burning the candle at both ends in order to get on top of the unreal workload they expected me/us to constantly manage and balance.
So none of this utter, sheer, unadulterated twaddle and balderdust this now online news item concludes with - i.e. that 'For most people, changing the clock (aka daylight savings) doesn't have any [real, tangible] effect...excepting a bit of adjustment over a day or two.' Many of us intuitively know this to be patently untrue - whatever our vocation/line of paid work (or otherwise).
Nevertheless, the admonition to overcome any issues via regularly going to bed thereafter on average 15 minutes earlier, and increasing this later if necessary, appears good, sound advice; long having been the standard procedure to sleep issues in general (till one establishes one's own best retiring and rising times for obtaining peak sleep - in both quantity and quality). Yes, fair enough - as far as it goes.
To sign off, as I said recently (in my September the 22nd blogpost thereabouts) - in a rare piece of commendation for that most monolithic and bureaucratic of modern institutions, the **European Union - even if it's a matter of sticking to daylight savings' times (as opposed to ordinary, original time), hey, choose one or t'other, but, at the very least, stop going back and forth between them, okay!
*Toxic Beauty is a book I'd like to get a-hold of again sometime, detailing the cocktail of potent poisons we either ingest or otherwise 'treat' ourselves to and with on a regular, daily basis in our ultra-'civilized' world; along with a recent 'NZ Listener' with its cover story 'Don't Touch the Toxins: Alarming new evidence about the chemicals & plastics we use at home'.
**Evidently Europe presently 'features' three different time zones, a U.K.-centric one, one affecting most of the rest (from the Scandinavian nations down) and an Eastern European one, but I'll need to investigate that further no doubt...
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