Today marks the first day of daylight saving time in 2023. Many U.S. health reporters and bloggers have devoted newsprint or digital space to the pros and cons of shifting our clocks one hour forward so that there is more late-day sunshine during the warmer months. In 2019, my colleague Jen Middleton discussed how to minimize sleep disruptions caused by the time change. This year, Rita Rubin wrote a terrific news article in JAMA that highlighted the contrast in public support for making daylight saving time year-round with the positions of major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Medical Association, that support abolishing daylight saving and sticking with permanent standard time.
For nine months in 1974, the U.S. actually instituted year-round daylight saving time in the hope of reducing energy consumption during the OPEC oil embargo. Unfortunately, noted Rubin, "the shift to daylight saving time in the middle of winter meant that many schoolchildren had to go to school in the dark," contributing to the publicized deaths of 8 Florida students in early-morning car accidents. Public support for the change waned rapidly, and President Gerald Ford signed a law that reverted to standard time that fall.
Switching topics, I've been working to build Common Sense Family Doctor's presence on Substack, where I started cross-posting in January after I was briefly locked out of Twitter. Although my Twitter access was eventually restored, that platform is going rapidly downhill, with qualified health professionals fleeing in droves while purveyors of misinformation have been emboldened by Elon Musk's "anything goes as long as it can be monetized" stance. So I appreciated a recent shout-out from fellow blogger Hans Duvefelt, MD, whose long-running A Country Doctor Writes features thoughtful and absorbing observations on the pleasures and pains of practicing family medicine in rural Maine, and is now available as a subscription on Substack. Hans has also written three books based on his blog writings and videos, the first of which entertained my family for many hours as we drove back from Salt Lake City to Washington, DC in the summer of 2021. If you haven't previously visited his blog or Substack, they are well worth a few minutes of your day, regardless of your feelings on daylight saving.
