It's About Time ~ My Words Have Found Their Voice

Okay, so what would wake-up my word factory after two days of vacation from thinking? Sleep! Not my lack of or overabundance of sleep, but the world's precarious sleep situation. I kid you not.

This Sunday it is time to fall back ~ reset our clocks one hour back to normal time. That's right, no more extra daylight for the estimated 1.5 billion people who live in countries that worship daylight savings time. I'm one of them and I had no idea how dangerous the first day of daylight savings could be.

According to a letter by Dr. Imre Jansky published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a review of Sweden's comprehensive registry of heart attacks over the last 19 years showed that there was an overall increase in heart attacks the week that daylight savings was instituted, with the biggest day being Monday. Conversely, there was a decrease in heart attacks the week clocks returned to normal time, again with the biggest decrease coming on Monday.

So, the moral of the story is stay in bed the week after daylight savings starts and jump out of bed the week after normal time returns.

I do have a question, however. Since Sweden is up somewhere near the "top" of the globe, they get practically 24 hours of daylight in the summer and relatively little in the winter. I don't know, maybe it's me, but I would think that these people are so worn out from a summer of excessive sunshine, that they are thrilled to have an extra hour to sleep when the clock rolls back. I mean I just adore daylight savings time, but when I was in Norway over the summer, even the excess of daylight got to me! I spent way more hours awake than my brain could handle.

So no wonder, Swedes experience an increase in heart attacks the day after daylight savings begins. They're thinking about all those hours of sunshine they have to contend with over the summer months. And conversely, it's no wonder they experience a decrease in heart attacks the day after normal time returns. They're letting out a collective sigh of relief that they can hibernate for a while and prepare for next summer's 24/7 fling!

Now as for the rest of the countries that observe daylight savings ~ you will have to come up with your own theory.

(My post today was based on an on-line article published by Stephanie Nano of the Associated Press on the correlation between heart attacks and moving the hands of time.)