Science & Technology

Daylight Savings Time risks accidents and heart attacks, scientists warn

By T.K. Randall
March 29, 2026 ·  5 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Early this morning in the UK, the clocks moved forward one hour - a ritual that millions of people go through, twice a year, due to Daylight Saving Time (DST).

Designed to maximize the amount of daylight we receive on a daily basis, it seems like a harmless idea in principle, but according to scientists, it does come with some potential downsides.

Cellular rhythm expert Dr John O'Neill of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge maintains that Daylight Savings Time is mostly redundant these days.

"It is like everybody in the country gets an hour's jet lag, all at the same time," he said.

"You see an increase in incidence of heart attacks and strokes, and you do get an increase in the number of road traffic accidents for a few days after clocks change."O'Neill argues that human physiology is unable to cope with this type of sudden change.

"If you place all of those burdens and demands on, for example, the cardiovascular system, an hour earlier, then it is just not quite as well prepared to satisfy the demand," he said.

"So in people that are a bit older or a bit less healthy, it increases their risk of an adverse event, a heart attack or a stroke."

There have been some heated debates in recent years as to whether Daylight Saving Time is still useful in the modern world and if it would be better to simply scrap the whole thing.

As things stand, however, it seems unlikely to be disappearing anytime soon.

Source: Mail Online | Comments (5)

Tags: Clock, Time