Feeling tired today? A closer look at the push to end daylight saving time in the US
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- With serious health impacts linked to daylight saving time, there's been a push over the years to repeal the time change altogether in the United States.
"Small changes in sleep, even small decreases can detrimentally affect your health, increase in stress hormones, that increases our risk of heart attacks and strokes, principally among women and older adults in the first two days after this shift change, so you have to pay attention," ABC News Medical Correspondent Dr. Darien Sutton said.
First established as law back in 1918, it was implemented as a way to maximize daylight hours to help save on energy consumption during WWI.
Arizona and Hawaii are exempt from the time change.
Despite standing strong as a practice in the U.S. for over a century now, legislators and states have made a push to end daylight saving.
In 2022, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a measure called The Sunshine Protection Act to make daylight saving time permanent, meaning we wouldn't fall back in November. However, the legislation was never brought to a vote in the House of Representatives.
President Donald Trump wrote on social media a few weeks before returning to the White House that "Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient and very costly to our nation", vowing that the Republican Party would repeal it.
While it remains law, experts have some advice on how to minimize the negative impacts. Doctors recommend going to sleep earlier ahead of the change, but if you didn't do that, going to bed earlier by about 15-30 minutes for the first week after the change can help too, with experts saying maintaining sleep consistency can have big health impacts.
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"We talk about the amount of time you should sleep, we talk about quality, staying asleep, but the third factor of sleep is consistency, the same sleep time and the same wake time, each and every day, we want to try to keep that as close as possible," Dr. Sutton said.
Experts also recommend avoiding caffeine or alcohol in the immediate days after and making an effort to get sunlight in the first 15 minutes of your day if possible, as it can help reset your circadian rhythm.
