Daylight saving time causes fatigue and irritability and generates less savings, according to analysis of the federal government

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador released three documents on Wednesday that summarize the analyzes it made on summer time, in force in Mexico since 1996, and with which it seeks to support its intention to abolish this measure.

The documents focus on two aspects of daylight saving time: its health effects and its economic effects.

Regarding the former, the documents indicate that summer time affects people’s health because it alters the biological clock. According to the above, the time setting that makes it get dark later causes problems such as fatigue and irritability.

“The time change alters the time of exposure to the sun and unbalances our biological clock. Thus, several International Sleep Societies advise a schedule without changes and recommend maintaining winter time permanently, especially for children and the elderly, ”says one of the documents.

“Desynchronization with the environment alters our internal temporal order causing physical and mental problems, and these problems occur more often in the days after the time change, for example, adults need 3 to 7 days to adapt to the change of time. hour and the child population requires more time”, he adds.

By age groups, the analysis ensures that the time change generates fatigue and lack of concentration in school-age children, while in adolescents it causes sleep and wakefulness disturbances and daytime sleepiness.

“The choice of daylight saving time is political and therefore can be changed (…) Increasingly, studies show that time differences between the social clock and the biological clock challenge health, so if we want to improve our health, we should not fight against our biological clock. It is advisable to return to standard time (which is when the time of the sundial coincides with the time of the social clock) ”, he insists.

Government sees lower savings

As for the economic effects, one of the released documents argues that the savings resulting from summer time have been falling.

He points out that in 2017 they were 2 thousand 241 million pesos; in 2018, 2 thousand 174 million; in 2019, one thousand 875 million; in 2020, 1,193 million, and in 2021, 1,138 million.

The analysis, prepared by the Ministry of Energy (Sener), ensures that in order to obtain these results, the electricity consumption of the months prior to the start of summer time was compared with the months after.

According to the document, this showed that the savings are less and less significant.

The document concludes with a table of countries that have abandoned daylight saving time.

This Wednesday, President López Obrador said that he will soon make an approach on how this measure could be eliminated.