Scrap autumn clock change for health claim
Friday October 29th, 2010
Britain should not be changing the clocks this weekend, one expert says today.
Introducing a new time-keeping system that maximises the amount of daylight in the UK would vastly improve health and well-being, it is claimed.
Britain's
twice yearly change of clocks is increasingly controversial - and now
one expert says the UK is in completely the wrong time zone for healthy
living.
Mayer Hillman, Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, claims that not putting the clocks back this weekend - but putting them forward in the spring - would be an easy way to encourage more outdoor activity.
Writing in this week’s British Medical Journal, Mr Hillman believes the effect of increasing the number of “accessible” daylight hours would help to stem the incidence of chronic illness.
Surveys have shown a trend towards declining fitness and some have predicted that more than half the UK population will be clinically obese by 2050, he writes.
Although most people are aware of the benefits of taking up more physical activity, few people are able to spare the time for at least 30 minutes of moderate or vigorous activity daily.
The suggested the clock change “would considerably increase opportunities for outdoor leisure activities - about 300 additional hours of daylight for adults each year and 200 more for children”, says Hillman.
Adopting the clock change proposal “is an effective, practical and remarkably easily managed way of achieving a better alignment of our waking hours with the available daylight during the year," he argues.
“It must be rare to find a means of vastly improving the health and well-being of nearly everyone in the population and at no cost. Here we have it. All it requires is a majority of MPs walking through the ‘Ayes’ lobby in the House of Commons.”
According to Hillman, there is strong public support for the clock change - about four to one in England and Wales and fairly evenly divided in Scotland.
British Medical Journal October 30 2010
Tags: Fitness | General Health | UK News
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