The issue isn’t light, it’s how time changes mess with circadian rhythms — twice a year. As with so many things, people look only at the advantages and ignore the costs.
“Fall Standard Time isn’t nearly as nasty as changing clocks ahead in the spring: each year, on the Monday after the springtime switch, hospitals report a 24% spike in heart attack visits around the country. Researchers estimate that the sleep deprivation may take weeks for recovery.
And, perhaps not surprisingly, we’re also prone to make more deadly mistakes on the roads: Car crashes in the US caused by sleepy daylight-saving drivers are estimated to cost 30 extra people their lives.
Your body is “… fragile and susceptible… to even just one hour of lost sleep,” said sleep expert Matthew Walker, author of How We Sleep. “The brain… is just as sensitive as the heart to very small perturbations of sleep,” Walker explains in his book.”
There might be a health benefit to getting people off their couches a couple of times a year to change their clocks.