The sun to us   not a decree!

Anatoly Sudakov,

scientific Secretary of the Medical Geography Section

Volgograd branch of the Russian Geographical Society

Next Sunday we will once again turn the clock hands from summer to winter time. This manipulation in its consequences is comparable with the transfer of the population of the entire vast country to the neighboring time zone every six months. At the same time, the routine of work and wakefulness that is familiar to the body is violated, causing a painful condition - desynchronosis.

Any discord with a natural daily rhythm not only spoils health, but also shortens life. Meanwhile, since 1930, the population of our country has been living according to the so-called maternity time, which, by the will of the then Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, is one hour ahead of the standard time. It was introduced to save electricity in the evening. And since 1981, in order to save even more money, we began to switch arrows an additional hour every spring and live six months according to the so-called daylight saving time, two hours ahead of the standard time.

And although the arrows are translated on the night of the day off, adaptation to the consequences of this event takes on average from one day to one and a half, not counting those who suffer much longer. On a national scale, this is, according to the most rough estimates, of the order of four hundred million man-days per year!

Always, as the time comes once again to turn the arrows, there are reputable scientists trying to convince the population that this is practically indifferent to the body. Nevertheless, you will not find generalized scientific data on a decrease in labor productivity and total losses in production (or lack thereof) associated with another temporary shake-up. Although, for example, even without any scientific research, any milkmaid will tell you that each cow after clock transfer is still milked for a long time in the old time.

But it is known that the energy savings in lighting homes and jobs with the current time calculation system in Russia do not exceed 0.5 percent of the electricity generated in the country. And its annual savings per inhabitant does not even reach 26 kW / h, which is comparable in value to two loaves of bread. You do not have to be a great economist to understand: the game over time is not worth the candle.

The most unpleasant consequence of maternity and maternity leave is that we are forced to wake up for an hour almost the entire life in the winter, and two in the summer earlier than expected. That is, for a significant part of the year to get up long before dawn. This disrupts a full night's sleep. Particularly affected are those who start work at eight (and in true - zone - time - at six) hours. For more than six months, these poor people (if they live in the southern regions of Russia) lack sleep! Even officials who start working from nine in the morning, sleep more than three and a half months a year. For the latitude of St. Petersburg, these figures increase by more than one and a half times.

Our organisms, at the cost of extraordinary efforts, adapt themselves to extraordinary circumstances. It is known that increased mental performance is associated with a high content of glucose in the blood and an increase in the minute release of blood from the heart, which is accompanied by an increase in blood pressure. Directly depends on the performance of blood cholesterol. The increase in blood pressure and, consequently, a greater influx of oxygen to the "sleepy" cells and tissues also contributes to the consumption of large amounts of sodium chloride in food. Hence the craving of our contemporaries for sugar, butter, fatty and salty foods. But an excess of fatty foods in the diet in a significant number of people contributes to the development of sclerosis. Excess salt provokes chronic hypertension, and sugar - diabetes. These diseases have become the most widespread among us.

Due to the shift of the clock forward, we are forced to go to bed ahead of time in order to provide ourselves with the necessary duration of sleep. Therefore, tens of millions of people have difficulty falling asleep and become addicted to sleeping pills, which cause additional harm to the body.

Ruthless experience is already being put on the fourth generation in a row. The number of experimental subjects at different times ranged from one hundred forty-five to two hundred and seventy million people. Meanwhile, in order to get the meager savings that we talked about above, it’s enough just to postpone the start of work for one to two hours, depending on the season of the year, to a brighter time of day.

In this case, we will get an extra hour due to the bright morning time, when we are supposed to be awake, and not the night, when we should sleep!

Now one can only wonder why the Stalinist Commissars did not think of this simple thought in 1930. Or maybe they didn’t think about it. And they did according to the logic of thinking of those years when, as it seemed, there was nothing impossible. Even turn the river back, even in the middle of the night crowing, as if the sun had already risen!

But most of all, it is surprising that successive governments have been stubborn for nearly seventy years in this stupid way of penniless savings, which translates into billions in the cost of treating a critically ill experimental population. Indeed, in time similar to Russian, less than five percent of the countries of the world live. These are mainly the former Soviet republics, as well as Belgium, Britain, Denmark and France. Moreover, the population and physicians of the last four years have been fighting for a return to standard time. But nobody blows in our mustache!

P.S. We must pay tribute to the former regional leadership, who insisted in the mid-80s. on the right of our region to live according to Moscow time. This meant for us a return in winter to standard time. Therefore, we are better than residents of other subjects of the Federation. But, nevertheless, twice a year we are “shaken,” like the whole country.

The question of switching to winter time in Russia does not seem to be closed once and for all. This was announced on April 17 by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, answering questions from deputies after speaking in the State Duma.

“No need to twitch, let's live in this time. But this does not mean that the issue is closed once and for all, ”D. Medvedev said.

Recall that the switch to winter time was canceled in June 2011. by decree of the President of Russia D. Medvedev. The question of the appropriateness of such a decision was raised several times.

On April 2 of this year, Komsomolskaya Pravda published an interview with the head of the Laboratory of Pathology of the Autonomic Nervous System of the Clinic for Nervous Diseases of the First Moscow State Medical University named after THEM. Sechenov, doctor of medical sciences, professor Gennady Kovrov. In this interview, Gennady Kovrov said that "summer" time is harmless to health. He built his statement on the assertion that the adaptive capabilities of the human body are limitless.

In addition, this is very important, since it contradicts both domestic and foreign studies of the impact of changes in the time count on the health of people, especially on the health of children, adolescents and the elderly. Words about the harmlessness of "summer" time are the actual support of the current administrative time. This "Medvedev time" in 2012 tried to justify the assistant professor of the geographical faculty of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov Andrey Panin. But his attempts were unsuccessful due to obvious violations of the laws of nature. “Medvedev time”, as shown by two years of its harmful effects on health, is a diversion against Russia, since it is two hours ahead of the standard time of the International System of Time Zones all year round (!).

Such a system of time does not exist in any other country in the world. The harmfulness of being ahead of standard time is that people forcibly awaken long before sunrise and even begin to work or study in the dark.

The unnaturalness of the time zone advance was proved by medical research in 1994-2010. groups of Novosibirsk scientists led by Professor V.I. Khasnulina, scientists of Tomsk, Yakutsk, somnologists of Moscow and St. Petersburg. And the members of the St. Petersburg Public Committee “For Restoring Life in Russia in Standard Time” quantitatively determined the value of premature, before sunrise, wakefulness of the Russian population due to the shift of the clock hands in the summer - at different times of the start of the working (school) day, and with the "Medvedev" time system, with the previous, until 2011, time system, with year-round maternity time, which is one hour ahead of the standard time, and with a one-hour shift of the clock hands only in summer. According to the latest time system, 67 of 240 countries, separate territories and zones of the world now live.

Gennady Kovrov is not a specialist in somnology - the science of human night sleep, and does not know that there are 125 centers for studying human night sleep in the USA, and the main results of their work are reflected in the books Lynn Lenberg “Body Rhythms” and Stanley Koren “Sleep Secrets” ”, Translated into Russian as far back as 1997-98.

Stanley Koren proved premature death from accidents and an increase in the number of fatal accidents due to a one-hour lead time zone time.

In 2005, physicians from Great Britain, the USA and Israel, whose population also lives one hour ahead of the local time, examined one hundred thousand of their citizens and found that all children and adolescents under the age of 20 years and elderly people over the age of 45-50, the normal functioning of the internal biological clock is disrupted, which led to systematic disturbances in night sleep: insomnia, daytime sleepiness, and depression.

Our Committee identified the consequences of the current and previous systems of the Russian time that are more harmful to human health.

With his false statements, Professor Kovrov repeated the answers of the State Standard of Russia (now the State Technical Regulation of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation) about the harmlessness of being ahead of standard time for human health. The Gosstandart of Russia, which did not answer for people's health, sent unsubscribes to our repeated appeals to the Governments and the Presidents of the Russian Federation about the lack of data on the harmfulness of being ahead of standard time in Russia and abroad.

We work in collaboration with scientists from the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (RAMS), the country's main public health research institution.

In his interview, G. Kovrov claims that the duration of the night sleep of our ancestors was the same as at the present time. In fact, our ancestors who lived in the 18th-19th centuries slept 2-5 hours more than we slept. This statement by Stanley Koren is also confirmed by our calculations, from which it follows that, due to being ahead of the local time and harmful, especially in the high geographical latitudes of Russia, from 50 degrees to the Arctic Circle, the adults forced to wake up forcibly four to five hours before sunrise.

Professor Kovrov is right in saying that somnologists recommend sleeping from 6 to 10 hours. However, he does not distinguish between the normal duration of nightly sleep of children and adolescents from adult sleep. Children should sleep on average 11 hours in winter and 10 in summer; adults - 2 hours less. American scientists found by examining large groups of volunteers that sleep with a duration of 10 hours significantly contributes to the quality of wakefulness, i.e. mindfulness and quick wit of people than a six-hour sleep.

In his interview, Professor Kovrov speaks of the presence of only two chronotypes of people: “larks” and “owls,” silent about the fact that most people, at least 60%, are arrhythmias or “pigeons” who are used to observing the normal duration of night sleep. Our doctors believe, and not without reason, that the "lark" becomes an "owl" in childhood due to an abnormal sleep pattern.

Further, G. Kovrov believes that the main cause of road traffic accidents is apnea - short-term respiratory arrest, from 10 seconds to three minutes. Without denying the effect of apnea on road accidents, we believe that the main cause of car accidents and air transport crashes is chronic fatigue syndrome - due to accumulating systematic lack of sleep and fatigue. This is convincingly shown in the mentioned books by Lynn Lenberg and Stanley Koren, data for Novosibirsk, that with the “Medvedev time” the number of accidents increased by 40% compared with the previous time system. This is also evidenced by the personal experience of the author.

It is noteworthy that as a cause of car accidents in daily news reports, drowsiness behind the wheel is replaced by the incomprehensible phrase "the driver lost control." I note that in the number of fatal accidents and plane crashes, Russia ranks first in the world.

I believe that after the above evidence of Professor Kovrov’s clumsy attempt to justify Medvedev’s time, and at the same time the previous time systems ahead of the standard time, there is no need to discuss with Kovrov the last three of the seven night sleep myths expressed by the journalist of the Komsomolskaya Pravda in Saint Petersburg ”by Svetlana Kuzina: about the possibility of ordering a dream in a dream, about prophetic dreams and about the ability to predict the future from dream books.

Concluding our opinion about the "summer" time, long recognized by scientists from countries such as the UK, USA, Israel, the Baltic countries, scientists from Kazakhstan, France, Belgium, Denmark, Australia, whose governments still violate the health of their citizens, I remind readers that Governments of 2/3 countries of the world do not engage in “clock hands”, including the DPRK and South Korea, Japan, where the average life expectancy, by the way, is the highest in the world. And exceeds the average life expectancy in Russia by at least 15 years.

V.P. APRELEV
  Chairman of the St. Petersburg Public Committee
  "For the restoration of life in Russia according to standard time",
  Specialist in Chronobiology, Applied Astronomy and Systems Analysis

Firstly, it should be noted that in the current version of the transition to winter time, the final decision is left directly to the regions. Plus, another 2 time zones have been entered.

It is this circumstance is a formal reason   the fact that deputies who previously voted for summer timeand now they don’t consider their previous vote illogical during the winter season. Although it is still strange that suddenly such a sharp epiphany occurred in their minds.

What will happen now?

We will not describe the results of the introduction of winter time throughout the country, but only Moscow.

This table shows the average summer and winter time.

	Summer time	Winter time
Dawn - Sunset SUMMER	Dawn: 3-00 Sunset: 22 -00	Dawn:2-00 Sunset: 21 -00
Dawn - sunset WINTER	Dawn:8-00 Sunset: 17-00	Dawn:7-00 Sunset: 16-00

As you can see, there is a decrease in active daylight hours, especially in the summer.

Please note that the dawn in the summer will now begin at 2 a.m., and the sunset in the winter will be at 16 p.m.

How sensitive is it for us?

The first thing you need to pay attention to- this is what we are a northern country with a lack of daylight and sunlight. Legislatively even further reducing these indicators, we are increasing this disadvantage, which can directly affect human health.

An increase in the amount of dark time of the day can negatively affect the human psyche -   there is a feeling of apathy, depression, melancholy states. All this can lead to serious psychological problems right up to development. chronic depression, which in turn increases the number of suicides.

Second - a decrease in daylight hours (especially in summer) will directly affect the "pockets" of the population, as will have to turn on the light and use other electrical devices before.

Who benefits from this?

Recently, the problems of lobbying various large companies by some deputies of the State Duma have become more acute. Either they prohibit smoking everywhere, or by separate laws they begin to cancel their previous decisions. Almost every major law subsequently gradually overgrows with additional laws that “improve” the previous ones, etc. etc.

It is believed that the introduction of winter time is primarily beneficial to oil and gas companies, which will make more profit in the form of electricity charges. Is it so - the future and our "pockets" will show.

Is it profitable for the country?

Many arrows were also broken about the introduction of winter time. And so they thought that way.   It all turned out that summertime is more profitable for the economy ...!   Let the figure be small (from 3 - 15% - depending on who it thinks), but there is still a benefit from summer time!

However, dissatisfied voices appeared immediately after leaving Dmitry Medvedev. Moreover, these were the same voices that, when he was President, they were desperately proving with "numbers in their hands" about the NECESSITY OF INTRODUCING SUMMER TIME!

What has changed ...?