Daylight savings time was created in order for people to enjoy as much sunlight as they could.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – It appears that daylight saving time affects us more than we thought. According to the researchers, the hour that we win or lose each year is one of the underlying causes of a commonly occurring stroke.
The author of the study that claims that daylight saving time affects us more than we thought, Jori Ruuskanen, from Finland’s Turku University, declared that the risk of having an ischemic stroke is raised by the bi-annual clock change.
Dr. Ruuskanen discovered that the internal clock of the body, or the circadian rhythm, is significantly disrupted by daylight saving time, thus increasing the risk of an ischemic stroke. This type of condition is actually very common.
Usually, it is caused by a blood clot that plugs or blocks a blood vessel in the brain. The block stops the blood from traveling to the vital organ, and so brain cells begin to die rapidly. The Heart Association of America stated that ischemic strokes account for approximately 87 percent out of the total number of strokes.
In order to reach his conclusions, Dr. Ruuskanen’s team analyzed stroke data from Finland’s hospitals from 2004 until 2013. The researchers compared the stroke rate in roughly 3,000 people that were hospitalized in the week after a daylight savings time change, to that of approximately 12,000 patients that were hospitalized two weeks before or after the bi-annual hour modification.
The results of the research showed that the ischemic stroke rate was 8 percent higher in the first two days that preceded a transition in daylight saving.
Although the spike in stroke occurrences is not significant, Dr. Ruuskanen points out the fact that if a sleep disturbance so insignificant could lead to an 8 percent increase in strokes, then a major one could significantly affect the population.
Furthermore, the Finnish doctor explained that the most sensitive people to these changes are the cancer patients and the elderly. It seems that both categories have up to 25 percent more chances of having a stroke in the first two days of a daylight saving time chance than all other patients studied by the team.
Daylight saving time affects us more than we thought because it messes with our circadian rhythm, nature’s own biological clock. And one hour of sleep may seem little, but it can do wonders or disasters.
This year, on the 13th of March the clock will “spring forward” in order to catch up with the spring.
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