In the run up to the switch from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time: here’s a #Tweetorial about SRBR’s position paper written by @TillRoen & colleagues on the consequences of choosing to live on #DST or Standard Time. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…. 1/13
SRBR advocates for an end to the annual ritual of switching the clocks by an hour. Based on the existing data, SRBR recommends to #endDST & #LockTheClock to #PermanentStandardTime. Why? Continue reading 👇 2/13
Before the modern era, humans – just like other animals – structured their lives by the sun clock that is set by the rotation of Earth. This clock was in synchrony with their body clock, which is set by our individual biological clock. 3/13
Nowadays, most of us organize our lives by a social clock, which instead is set by society, such as according to office hours & school times – a clock that rarely is in sync with the sun clock or the body clock. 4/13
The fact that our body clocks still mostly follow the sun clock creates issues in time zones. The further west people live in a time zone, the greater the gap between the body clock and the social clock. The consequences are potential health problems & a shorter life span. 5/13
What do #DST and time zones have in common? There are people who live in one time zone east of our own time zone. They get up, go to work and fall asleep an hour earlier than we do. This is ok because the sun also rises earlier as we go further east. 6/13
BUT when we change our social clocks to DST, we have to live like these people in the east, even though we remain where we are. We have to get up and go to work or school an hour earlier. 7/13
In other words, DST moves the eastern border of our time zone much further east. This is like living further west in the time zone with the health consequences described above. 8/13
Yes, there may be good sides to DST: we have more hours of daylight during our free time after work or school in the evening. But DST also creates problems, both short term and long term. 9/13
The sudden switch to DST causes shorter sleep, worse performance & health. For example, some studies show that there are more heart attacks in the days after the switch to DST compared with other days! 10/13
In the long term, the time difference between the social clock and the body clock during DST challenges our health and is associated with decreased life expectancy, shortens sleep, and causes mental & cognitive problems. 11/13
Permanent DST means we have to go to school and work an hour earlier for an additional 5 months. In winter, our body clocks are usually later than in summer relative to the sun clock. Permanent DST increases this gap, thereby challenging our health even more! 12/13
So let’s stop the fight against our #bodyclocks! Based on the evidence outlined above, we recommend abandoning DST & returning to Standard Time, when the sun clock most closely matches the social clock, throughout the year. This @BioClockStudio infographic sums it up well. 13/13 
