Daylight Saving Time: How's That Working for You?

Daylight saving time (DST) --- how’s that working for you?

Apparently it’s not so good for many of us. According to a study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, DST may not be the best thing for our health, since it comes as such a jolt to our cardiovascular systems.

Have you been dragging out of bed since March 13, the date we moved our clocks forward this year? It’s worth it, isn’t it? After all, we do get that extra hour of daylight. Well, that extra hour of afternoon sunshine is associated with a 10% increase in the risk of having a heart attack on the Monday and Tuesday after moving the clocks forward, according to Martin Young, Ph.D., Professor of Cardiovascular Disease at UAB. The opposite occurs in the fall when we move the clocks back; there is a 10% decrease in risk of heart attacks.

Why the potential for harm in moving the clocks forward? One theory, Dr. Young says, is that each cell in our body has something like an internal clock that allows it to anticipate change. When there is an abrupt change---like springing forward one hour---the cells don’t have time to readjust, creating stress, resulting in a detrimental effect on the body.

Maybe that’s why there is a higher incidence of traffic accidents and work place injuries on the first Monday and Tuesday after moving our clocks forward.

So, here I am, almost two weeks into this time change, and I’m still groping for that lost hour of sleep, dragging myself to the coffee pot at 5:30 a.m., reminding myself---with every heavy, burdensome, languid step--- that it’s really 4:30 a.m., at least according to the circadian rhythms of those cells in my body, which obviously haven’t had time to readjust to this barbaric method of enjoying an extra hour of afternoon sunlight.

I feel like Bill Murray as the character Bob Wiley in the film, What about Bob? Bob awakens himself each morning by repeating the words in his half-awake state, “I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful... I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful... I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful...” I’m with you, Bob; it’s just that the internal clocks in my cells haven’t gotten the message yet.

It should remind us that as slippery as time is, we are still subject to it. Even something as small as a one hour time change can throw our systems into confusion for days, even weeks. Last Sunday, one of the persons who meets regularly for prayer was absent. Seeing her later in the morning, she simply explained, “Time change. I’ll get used to about the time it changes again.”

I understand. I get that.

Time. That’s all it is, after all. And time in its essence is well nigh impossible for us to grasp. Who after all invented time? God? Not necessarily, at least according to Stephen Hawking. In his book, A Short History of Time, he states, “So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place then, for a creator?”
Other scientists have proposed a mulitverse—a theory that describes the continuous formation of universes through the collapse of giant stars and the formation of black holes. And physicists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have postulated a model where two universes collide to produce a new beginning for the universe. Time changes; it reaches back and forward beyond time, meta-time.
I still want to leave room for God in his universe, even though I have difficulty articulating the concept of time. That’s why I’m with St.Augustine, who believed in God as the creator of the heavens and the earth and of time itself. But when he tried to explain time, he too was at a loss for words, “What then is time? I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
Wiping the sleep from my eyes, shuffling toward the coffee pot, I know time not as a theory to be explained but as a drag on both hemispheres of my brain.
One little hour reminds me of my weakness, my vulnerability, my dependency on the One who cared enough to enter what he created---our little time zone here on this terrestrial ball, our little moment in time---and deliver us from it, awakening us to more, even as we make our way through the daily routine.
Even through, God help us, Daylight saving time.

David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., can be reached at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or through his website, www.davidbwhitlock.com.