Clocks go forward this weekend with Brits to lose an hour's sleep - but could the change be ruining our health?
29 March 2025, 11:09
Circadian rhythms expert told LBC that putting the clocks forward could be 'detrimental' to our health.
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Dr Jeffrey Kelu told LBC's Matthew Wright that changing the clocks would increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and mood disorders.
He explained that our bodies have a circadian clock that regulates our when we want to sleep or eat, adapting to the earth's rotation and daylight.
"Circadian misalignment can be detrimental," he said.
He continued: "We scientists think that the standard time would be the best for the general health of the population."
Dr Kelu noted that there are discussions in the EU and the United States to scrap daylight savings altogether.
If we followed suit, we'd have to decide between the standard time, or the summertime - where we get more light in the evenings.
He continued: "In the UK the daylight saving time is introduced to save conserved energy during wartime. But that's no longer the case right now. Actually there are reports suggesting that we're not really saving much energy from that.
"We proposed to stick with the standard time is because we think the morning light is very important in setting up our circadian rhythms."
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Wright added that daylight savings were introduced so farmers could have longer evenings of light to work by after World War Two.
"We've got mechanised farms, we don't need to go gathering crops in the dark," he said.
The clocks go forward on Sunday evening at 1am, marking the beginning of British Summer Time.
This marks the end of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and will mean longer, lighter evenings from next week.
Early risers will notice darker mornings immediately after the March change, while evenings will be lighter as the sun sets later.
As sunrise and sunset times continue to extend, parts of the UK will see almost 19 hours of daylight by the summer solstice on June 21.
GMT was the default legal time used in Britain before DST was introduced.
This means when the clocks go back, the country returns to the default time zone introduced in Britain in 1880.
YouGov's most recent poll, published in October, showed that if our current system were scrapped, 59% of Britons would opt for the country to stay permanently on BST.
Alex Mayer, Labour MP for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard, has called for a "major overhaul of time" and a conversation about "how best to use our nation's daylight hours" in a parliamentary debate.
She said a return to what is known as "Churchill Time" used during the Second World War - when clocks moved an hour ahead in winter and two hours ahead in spring and summer - could help save a combined £485 million in yearly electricity bills, and reduce carbon emissions by more than 400,000 tonnes.
US President Donald Trump posted in December that he wanted to scrap DST. His secretary of state Marco Rubio has also called the ritual of changing time twice a year "stupid".
