How Daylight Saving Time affects sleep and what farmers think about the time change
When the clocks fell back this weekend, many people gained an extra hour of sleep. But the twice-yearly time change can have effects beyond adjusting the clocks, including disruptions to the body's internal rhythm.
For farmers, however, the shift is less of a concern. Mike Weststeyn, whose family owns about 700 acres of almond orchards in the Ripon area, said their work schedule is guided by daylight, not the clock.
"For us in the ag community, it's basically we work when the sun comes up," Weststeyn said. "So whether you call that seven o'clock or six o'clock, we're going to be out in the field when daylight happens. So, it doesn't really affect us much with switching back and forth, it's just we start work when the sun comes up and we quit when we're done. That's it."
The idea that farmers were among the biggest supporters of Daylight Saving Time is a common misconception. The Farmers' Almanac has noted that farmers were among the practice's loudest opponents when it was introduced in 1918.
Weststeyn said farmers will adjust to the time change, though he would prefer not to have to change the clocks twice a year.
"It would be nice maybe if they left it alone, wouldn't have to worry about changing your clocks or most of them are all electronic and they update automatically anyway, but it's something that we deal with it," he said.
For sleep, the changes can be more consequential.
Renske Lok, a sleep and circadian rhythm expert with the University of Colorado's Department of Integrative Physiology, said switching clocks twice a year can disrupt the body's natural rhythms.
"I always say daylight savings is a bad thing from a biological perspective," Lok said. "There might be other perspectives from which it's kind of a good thing. Farmers, economy, people like to play golf after work, so permanent daylight savings would be a great choice for those, but from a biological perspective, it is not."
Lok compared the time change to traveling across one time zone, similar to flying from Colorado to California. She said the fall time change can be easier to adjust to than the spring shift, when people lose an hour of sleep.
The spring transition has been associated with an increased risk of accidents and cardiovascular events, Lok said, in part because of the sleep loss that can follow the change.
"This is generally tied to more sleep deprivation because with spring forward, of course, you get to sleep a little less," she said.
To make the fall transition easier, Lok recommends gradually shifting bedtime and wake-up time later in the days leading up to the change.
"You can start as early or as late as you want," she said. "You can do 6 days in advance and shift 10 minutes later. So if you always go to bed at 11, now you go to bed at 11:10 the first day, 11:20 the second day, and so forth. And have your wake-up time shift with that, because we don't want you to get sleep deprivation, obviously."
For Weststeyn and other farmers, the time on the clock won't change the work ahead.
"Whatever time it is, that's when we'll get the work done," he said.
President Donald Trump has also criticized the twice-yearly time change, calling Daylight Saving Time "inconvenient, and very costly" and expressing support for eliminating it.
