The following is the opinion and analysis of the writers:
Mary Carskadon
Lynne Lamberg
Daylight Saving Time started in the U.S. on Sunday, March 8. Residents of most states turned their clocks forward by an hour and will keep them there until 2 a.m., Nov. 1, when Standard Time returns.
Arizona, except for the Navajo Nation, and Hawaii are the only two states that stay on Standard Time year-round, as do the five U.S. territories — American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Arizona’s decision to stay on Mountain Standard Time year-round in March 1968 followed an unpopular trial of Daylight Saving Time the previous year. Residents complained the extra hour of sunlight prompted higher evening air-conditioning use, boosting utility bills. Legislators passed a bill, signed by then-Governor Jack Williams, exempting Arizona from the nation’s Uniform Time Act of 1966.
Permanent Standard Time offers many health benefits, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, American Medical Association, and other health organizations.
Standard Time keeps our sleep/wake cycle, appetite, and hundreds of other internal rhythms in sync with the Earth’s 24-hour dark/light cycle, enabling us to function well during the day and sleep well at night.
Daylight Saving Time, promoted by commercial interests such as tourism and recreation, steals an hour of daylight from the morning and gives it to the evening. Lack of daylight when we awaken makes us feel less alert in the morning. Extra daylight in the evening makes it harder to fall asleep and reduces the amount of sleep we get.
Adolescents, already sleep-deprived because their high schools start early, lose even more sleep under Daylight Saving Time. Most adolescents need 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night for optimal classroom performance and good physical and mental health. Biological changes in the brain that occur at puberty make it hard for most teenagers to fall asleep before 11 or 11:30 p.m. Most would sleep until 8 a.m. or later if not disturbed. Starting classes at 8:07 a.m. — the national average — on Daylight Saving Time is comparable to starting them at 7:07 a.m. on Standard Time.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that high schools start classes at 8:30 a.m. or later. The National Sleep Foundation recently urged adoption of permanent Standard Time to foster adolescent sleep health. Save Standard Time, a non-profit, non-partisan group based in Fountain Hills, Arizona, reports recent progress in several state legislatures toward this goal.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 80 percent of the nation’s adolescents sleep less than eight hours on a typical school night, the minimum amount sleep specialists recommend. About 40 percent of adolescents sleep less than six hours on average on school nights.
“Not getting enough sleep makes everything harder," said Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona. School schedules often pose challenges for student-athletes, who sometimes need to wake up early or stay up late. Regularly getting enough sleep can improve student athletes’ performance by 9 to 35 percent, Grandner said. Training has two components: pushing the muscles and body to their limits and building back stronger. “The build back stronger component happens in the bedroom, during sleep,” he said. “The body is optimized for recovery, especially of skeletal muscle.”
Students who average eight or more hours of sleep earn better grades, report less depression and suicidal thinking, drive more safely, and have lower rates of substance use than students who average less than eight hours of sleep, studies of thousands of adolescents show.
In Tucson, where high schools start classes on average at 7:58 a.m., some, including the Tucson Magnet High School and Sabino High School, offer elective Zero hours that start around 7 a.m. While not all students participate in Zero-hour activities, the clash between the early start time and teen biology means those who do likely sleep less than eight hours on school nights.
Start School Later, a national non-profit parent-led advocacy group, with chapters in 34 U.S. states and Washington, DC — none yet in Arizona — offers a free newsletter, help starting a local chapter, and resources from a national network of sleep, health, and advocacy experts for communities seeking to adopt healthy school start times at startschoollater.net
