Research shows that changing the time in Mexico damages health

Elvira Morgado Viveros, researcher and professor of the Biological School at the University of Veracruz (UV), alerted that it is necessary to stop the application of time changing in Mexico because it is causing severe health damages.

In countries like the United States, this time changing methods do have an objective to save daylight, but that country is in another latitude and the duration of day and night varies in comparison to Mexico.

“México is in a more equatorial position where changes in short and long days or nights during the seasons are tiny, we as a population don’t require that, it is damaging our health, and because of that, were a doing some research to prove it,” explained Morgado Viveros during her first symposium of Biological Sciences at the Biological School of the University of Veracruz.



She talked about her “chronobiological” research, the study of biological rhytms that all living beings and work that is being done from the cellular level, which are mechanisms of the biological clock that we have in the brain, as well as studies of how brain structures are functioning regarding a specific behavior.

Regarding the effects and adaptation that the time changing during fall and spring have over the population in Xalapa, she said that it affects them because we have a “chronobiological” lifestyle.

There is early-rising people and others that are really nocturnals, and that make us different as well as getting on our work and tasks in a different way; a nocturnal person that has to go to work at 7 a.m. doesn’t have the same attention and alert awareness that he or she will have after noon.



In the other hand, early-rising people are more active during the morning, having an optimal intellectual level, but won’t function at the same level at 7 or 8 p.m.

“This take us to a social problem, because working schedules are established according to a general, legal and governmental function, and this time changes that the government imposes, without considering the human’s natural conditions, create alterations.”



According to research, Xalapa’s population is mostly nocturnal, reporting that most of them wake up around 6 a.m., so, advancing the clock one hour in spring affects more than adjusting backward during fall.

“They have sleep alterations, presenting a lot of tiredness, some of them even report appetite changes.”

Morgado Viveros recommended to the population that while the authorities don’t do something about these time changes, “they should eat earlier, go to bed an hour earlier, it would be difficult, because our studies show that the population adapts to the new time after a week. They don’t need to think that if they ate at 2 p.m. before they should eat at 1 p.m., that won’t help us reset our biological clock.”

They should respect eating schedules.



Other topics from her research, refers to the rhythms of the diet and the importance of keeping the organism in optimal conditions.

“Not having stable schedules, waking up at the same time, eating breakfast or dinner at the same time creates alterations like metabolic syndrome, obesity problems, diabetes and even cancer.”

She said that they could emulate human behavior or situations in animals. “We emulate this time changing situations to animals, and we induce a cancer tumor and after we establish rigid eating schedules, we can considerably reduce these tumors.”



She said that plenty of research has be done regarding night workers, like the employees in a hospital, that after five years have develop a metabolic syndrome, because they live a double life, one during the day, and another one at night.