UMVA has learned that a renewed push in Washington aims to make daylight saving time permanent, ending the twice‑yearly clock shuffle that has long divided the nation.
In a decisive vote, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a bill to lock the “summer clock” in place, passing 48‑1 in a largely bipartisan effort to scrap the spring‑forward and fall‑back ritual.
While extra evening light in the dark months sounds appealing, sleep scientists warn that cementing daylight saving time would throw millions of bodies out of sync with their natural circadian rhythm.
Dr. Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, told UMVA that the science is being “misconstrued.” She explained that the abrupt shift each March is linked to spikes in car crashes, heart attacks, and widespread sleep loss.
Troxel emphasized that the evidence “strongly supports” permanent standard time—the winter clock—because it aligns with the body’s internal clock, keeping the delicate balance between morning light and darkness intact.
History offers a cautionary tale: the United States experimented with year‑round daylight saving time in the early 1970s, only to repeal the law within a year as commuters faced pre‑dawn drives, morning‑hour accidents surged, and promised energy savings never materialized.
Morning sunlight is the primary cue that anchors human circadian rhythms. Under permanent daylight saving time, most people would rise before the sun, forcing a chronic misalignment that feels like waking up in the middle of one’s biological night every day.
Supporters argue that brighter winter evenings could lift spirits and boost after‑work activity, yet Troxel warned that swapping morning light for evening glare sacrifices the very light that regulates sleep, alertness, and mental health.
Evening illumination pushes the internal clock later, making it harder to fall asleep at night and harder to awaken refreshed in the morning—an effect that fuels “bedtime procrastination” and deepens the nation’s sleep‑deprivation crisis.
With one in three Americans already short on sleep, the stakes are especially high for teenagers, a group already in a mental‑health emergency. A high‑school student forced to start class at 8 a.m. under permanent daylight saving time would effectively begin their day at 5:30 a.m. in biological terms, plunging them into the darkest hours of their internal night.
Framing permanent daylight saving time as a remedy for seasonal depression flips the science on its head; the loss of morning light, not the gain of evening glow, is what fuels mood disorders during the winter months.
