Oklahoma Is Working To Freeze Daylight Savings

As many differences as we all argue about in our everyday lives, here's just another commonality that ties us together in agreement. Everybody hates adjusting their clocks for daylight savings twice each year.

Admittedly, the Fall time change is usually easier on the body because most people take advantage of that extra hour of sleep once a year. If you're like me, you see it as an extra hour you can stay up pirating movies on the internet, so it's really just kind of a wash... but there's a much different story in the Spring when we all lose an hour, and it's all about your health and wellness.

Not-So-Fun Fact: Since humans are creatures of habit and routine, "springing forward" as they call it to enter the yearly period of Daylight Savings has a much more serious effect on our bodies than we're aware of.

The studies performed on this matter at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that the average heart attack rate elevates slightly when Daylight Savings begins. It also found that strokes see an average 8% jump in the two days following the Spring time change, as well as vehicle accidents due to this massive internal change to our biological clock.

This is the premise Oklahoma lawmakers are using to freeze Daylight Savings into a permanent year-round standard for the Sooner State.

It's not without other risks though. The same UTSMC study mentioned that states that already stick to year-round Daylight Savings experience an increased risk of cancer. While you might logically assume it's a risk of skin cancers due to having that extra hour of sun, the study points towards random internal cancers. It's a very weird study.

Alternatively, if we go ahead and fall back on Standard Time in November, the study suggests there's an increase in depression and low-mood disorders that are more common in the days and weeks after the Fall time change.

I know you and I have talked around this subject twice a year for the last fifteen years now, but at this point, I feel most people would be pretty kosher picking one or the other at this point, so long as we stick to it. I hate the 9:30 PM sunsets in summer, but I also hate the 5 PM sunsets in winter. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

While the odds are seriously stacked against him, State Senator Blake Stephens is trying to head off the Fall time change coming up in less than three weeks.

Curiously, across Oklahoma, there's about a forty-minute difference in sunrise and sunset on the Eastern border with Arkansas and the Western border with New Mexico. Lawton is just about in the middle offset some twenty minutes twice a day. It's not pertinent to the conversation, I just thought it was interesting.