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Sleep scientist Matthew Walker observed that "humans are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without apparent gain." We get up late to watch our favorite TV shows. We get up early to go to work or school at the hour. And twice a year, we change our clocks, to the amazement of our circadian rhythms.
We have also created conflicts between our natural and social clocks in a less obvious way, as highlighted by research published this month in the Journal of Health Economics. According to the study, living on the wrong side of a time zone can have negative consequences for a person's health and wallet.
Guilty party? More natural light in the evening.
To understand this study, co-written by Osea Giuntella of the University of Pittsburgh and Fabrizio Mazzonna of the Universita della Svizzera Italiana, it is important to understand the impact of time zones on the local time of sunset. As you can see on the map above, the sunrise and sunset times are spread from east to west.
Panama City, Florida, for example, is located in the far east of the central time zone, while Pecos, Texas, is located in the far west. This week, the sunset in Panama City around 19:12 Central time. In Pecos, it took more than an hour later, at 8:25 pm.
The sunset is a powerful biological trigger: the decrease in natural light causes the body to release melatonin, a hormone that induces sleepiness. As a result, the inhabitants of the part is in a time zone, where the sun goes down earlier, tend to go to bed earlier than those in the western part. The data below, derived from about 1 million users of Jawbone, a sleep tracking system now gone, illustrate this point, showing how sleep times are changing. East to West, a brutal reset taking place once you have crossed a new time zone.
Giuntella and Mazzonna wanted to know how changes to bedtime could affect a person's physical and economic well-being, so they did some testing.
Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Time Use Survey, in which respondents keep a detailed diary of how they spend their days, confirm what Jawbone's data suggests: Those who live in the geographical area of a time zone with a sunset later in bed, on average 19 minutes later than people who live with sunsets earlier.
The problem with people who go to bed later is that they usually can not recover their lost sleep: work and school have set start times, whether you live in Pecos or Panama City.
"People lying on the late sunset side of a time zone limit are more likely to be sleep deprived, more likely to sleep less than 6 hours and less likely to sleep at least 8 hours." "Write the authors. "The effects are greater in people with early work schedules and in people with children of old age to go to school."
Overall, 19 minutes of lost sleep per day translates into 115 hours of lost sleep a year. Given what is known about the importance of sleep for good physical and mental health, it is not surprising that Giuntella and Mazzonna have found a greater incidence of health problems in areas where the sun is setting later.
People late on the sunset in the US time zones were on average 11% more likely to be overweight and 21% more likely to be obese. Diabetes was more prevalent and the risk of heart attack increased by 19%. Breast cancer rates were also slightly elevated – about 5% above average.
The authors also found economic differences. We know that sleeping less harms productivity. As a result, the researchers found that "wages tend to be 3% lower by the end of sunset, suggesting negative effects on economic productivity."
Economic data suggests that people do not give much value to life on either side of the time zone. Housing prices and travel times are comparable, for example.
But not everything is bad for those who have died. Giuntella and Mazzonna think that sunset time could pay off in terms of the enjoyment that people get from it. "People can benefit more from enjoying their leisure time with more natural light in the evening," they write. In other words, an extra hour of daylight for recreation can at least partially compensate for the loss of sleep.
"Long working hours, work schedules, class start times and television schedules can create conflicts between our biological rhythms and our social rhythm. Our results suggest that remodeling social schedules to promote sleep can have significant effects on health and health. economic performance, "the researchers wrote.
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