Extra sleep after the autumn time change is linked to lower demand for NHS healthcare services

Extra sleep after the autumn time change is linked to lower demand for NHS healthcare services

The week following the autumn time change in England is associated with a fall in demand for NHS services for sleep disorders, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, depression and psychiatric illness, according to a study in the Christmas edition of the BMJ.

However, there is little evidence that the spring time change has a short-term impact on the number of health conditions, the researchers say.

Daylight saving time was introduced during World War I and involves moving clocks forward one hour in the spring and back one hour in the fall. It operates in around 70 countries and affects a quarter of the world's population.

However, some studies (mainly outside the UK) suggest that the time change, particularly the spring time change, has harmful effects on health, which has led to calls for its abolition.

To get a clearer picture, researchers examined the short-term (acute) effects of the time change on the mental and physical health of people in England.

Their findings are based on linked primary and secondary care records of 683,809 people with at least one of eight health events in the weeks surrounding the spring or fall time change from 2008 to 2019.

The health events analyzed were anxiety, severe acute cardiovascular disease, depression, eating disorders, road traffic injuries, self-harm or sleep disorders in primary or secondary care, or psychiatric illness in accidents and emergencies.

The mean daily number of events (per year, per region) in the first week after the time change was compared with those in the control period (four weeks before the time change and weeks 2-4 after).

In the week following the fall time change, fewer events occurred in five health conditions: anxiety (a 3% decrease from 17.3 events per day to 16.7), acute cardiovascular disease (a 2% decrease from 50 events per day to 48.9), depression (a 4% decrease from 44.6 to 42.7), psychiatric disorders (a 6% decrease from 3.5 to 3.3), and Sleep problems (a decrease of 8% from 3.5 to 3.3). 5.4 to 4.9).

Little evidence was found of a decrease in diagnoses of eating disorders, traffic accidents or self-harm, or of changes after the spring time change.

Because this is an observational study, no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. The authors point out that health records only contain events for which the person seeks medical care, as well as the date on which a health event is recorded by a doctor, which is not necessarily the date of onset of symptoms.

However, they say the results are based on 12 years of broadly representative GP and hospital data and provide a more complete picture of the impact of the time changes on demand for healthcare services than previous studies.

They suggest that the extra sleep during the fall time change and the abrupt increase in morning sunlight exposure after the change could be beneficial to health.

And they conclude: "Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about England's time change policy. Future research should investigate the mechanisms underlying the reduction in health events we observed following the autumn time change."

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