HOUSTON — It seems like this time every year we talk about the push to make daylight saving time permanent.
Instead of going through the rigamarole of springing forward and falling back every year, we would just keep daylight saving time all year round.
A bill in congress called “The Sunshine Protection Act” was actually passed in the Senate last year, but failed to make it past the house. That hasn’t stopped Florida Sen. Marco Rubio from bringing it back this year.
While everyday Americans might appreciate not changing their clocks twice a year, doctors aren’t so sure that is a good move. That’s thanks to how our bodies interact with the sun.
Our brain has an internal clock that controls everything from cardiac functions to hormones to sleep. That clock uses the sun to set itself. The morning sun lets our brain know it’s time to get up and get going. When it sets, our brain releases hormones like melatonin to help us sleep.
According to The Washington Post, when we change to daylight saving time every spring, that throws the sun's relationship with our brains out of whack. That’s because our daily schedules shift by an hour, meaning we wake in the dark and have more hours of sunlight at the end of our day.
So your brain thinks it should stay up later, and when the alarm clock goes off in the morning, our brain thinks we should still be sleeping. Some doctors warn keeping that going all year long could put our bodies at risk.