About canceling the transition to winter time. This spring, Russians will reset their clocks for the last time. Somnologists, sleep scientists, have been pushing for this project to be adopted for many years because they know that changing clocks has a negative impact on people's health. However, experts are surprised that, in accordance with the new decree, Russia will live exactly according to summer time: it is ahead of standard solar time not even by an hour, like winter, but by two. The manager spoke about the pros and cons of our new way of life Vladimir Kovalzon.

STRF.ru ​​help:
Kovalzon Vladimir Matveevich, leading researcher, member of the American and European Scientific Societies for the Study of Sleep, head of the Russian Society of Somnologists, Doctor of Biological Sciences

Vladimir Kovalzon: “Indeed, the regime was changed - and thank God... But in a very strange way! We will be two hours ahead of the Sun all year.”

So, we won't change the clocks anymore. How do somnologists feel about this?

- This is good. We have always advocated stopping changing clocks. Changes in rhythm, especially in spring, are a shock to the body. In fact, this is an unnecessary change in all our internal rhythms, which are already configured in a certain way. We have written and talked a lot about the fact that for many groups of the population this is undesirable and leads to, albeit temporary, but still impaired health.

Is this point of view common among all scientists who study biorhythms?

– Most scientists have it. There is such a special committee in St. Petersburg - for a return to solar time. An astronomer is the chairman there. Aprelev. They work very actively, collecting all sorts of documents.

Should we go back to solar standard time?

- Yes. First, historically, we had a change: we were introduced to “maternity time” in 1930. We began to be an hour ahead of the Sun throughout the country, in every zone. Then there were some ideas that this would help save money. Now it’s clear that this is nonsense about saving. On the contrary, people get up earlier and turn on the lights. Then under the Prime Minister Tikhonov in 1981 they also added summer-winter time. It turned out that in winter we are ahead of the Sun by an hour, and in summer we are ahead of it by two in each time zone. Somnologists opposed this decision, saying that the situation had worsened. Not only have we become very much ahead of the Sun in the summer - we even manage to get up after dark! – but we also change the regime twice a year.

Why is it harmful to get ahead of the Sun?

– The fact is that we have a biological clock ticking inside us, and it runs 25 hours, not 24 hours. We have to let them down every morning. We let them down with light. When we get up in the morning and open the curtains, the light falling on our eyes affects special systems that are not directly related to vision - they are related to the perception of light and the setting of the biological clock. They restart, adjust them in a new way. Electric light is very weak in this regard. It causes virtually no adjustments, unlike the solar spectrum.

Does it depend specifically on the spectrum, not on brightness?

– Mainly from the spectrum. Therefore, in the spring, a person feels better when real sunlight begins to enter the room. So, if we get up in the morning and are exposed to the light of an electric light bulb, the biological clock adjusts very poorly.

Therefore, a person feels bad in winter. He arrives to work or school sleep-deprived. His brain doesn't work. This is because the man got up too early, in the dark.

It's pointless. There is no benefit to this. There can be no savings here. What's the point? A man gets up in the middle of the night, burns electricity. And coming home before dark - what's the point? You can come home in the evening so it’s dark, what difference does it make? In winter, the day ends early; at 4 o’clock it’s already sunset. It's not scary. The main thing is not to injure yourself in the morning when we are adjusting.

So choosing summer time for your life is a big mistake?

- Why this particular decision was made, who dictated it - I don’t know. These were not scientists, not specialists. Surely some official acted who did not know what he was doing.

Will somnologists seek a review of this decision?

– Vyacheslav Aprelev’s committee in St. Petersburg regularly sends me reports that they write to the Presidential Administration, the government of the country, the State Duma, the Federation Council, the Ministry of Health and Social Development, where they justify it very clearly - they refer to the opinions of doctors, biologists, astronomers, geographers , proving: we need to return to standard solar time! I agree with them on this.

You can't play with time! These games do not give anything good: we stopped leading the needle, but the initiative turned out in a strange way - we are two hours ahead of the Sun. Not for an hour, as it was in Soviet times, but for two!

It is completely unclear what motivates them. This is infuriating. Major decisions affecting each person are made. And no one asks anyone! Even if experts give advice on their own initiative, no one listens to them.

But at least we stopped moving the needle. For whom was this particularly harmful?

– The most pronounced negative impact of changing clocks is on the elderly, disabled, and children. They react painfully to this. Internal rhythms, such as hormonal ones, are restored within a few days. Immunity disorders may occur.

What is the main reason for these negative effects?

– The fact is that the biological clock is a structure hidden deep in our brain, the mechanism of which was fully revealed in the 2000s. Completely - from genes to traits. This has been shown to be a very important mechanism that we carry within ourselves. We inherited it from our ancestors. In principle, it appeared at the dawn of evolution. The first living organisms on Earth, single-celled organisms and bacteria, already had this clockwork mechanism. We have it too. You can't fool the system. This is how we are made. In principle, it determines everything - not just the alternation of activity and rest, but all processes as a whole. The processes in our body are rhythmic. You and I are not computers! We are living organisms. We have an active inner life. She is subject to rhythms. The rhythm is strictly started and controlled. The release of hormones, food and drink, periods when our brain works well and when we cannot concentrate are subject to certain rhythms. It is advisable not to affect these rhythms.

Changing clocks is like flying to another time zone.

- Yes. When you fly to a different time zone, your body rebels. It takes him a long time to adapt to a new place. It has been shown that even a young and healthy person needs several days per time zone for the systems to return to normal. Moreover, during this period a person is in a very vulnerable state for various diseases and feels unwell. But for an elderly person, a child, or someone who is not very healthy—and, unfortunately, we have the majority of them—this can be fraught with problems. Chronic disorders that had no effect in any way can become aggravated and suddenly appear.

gloomy morning

It must be admitted that there was nothing convenient about moving the hands twice a year. We did this (and residents of 75 countries around the world continue to do this) in order not to lose the evening light hours in the summer. In October last year, Belarus, following Russia, did not move the clock back an hour for the first time in almost 30 years. So we stayed in summer time for the winter. And it, as geographers explain, is ahead of the astronomical one - the one that corresponds to natural time zones - by as much as two hours.

The most unpleasant thing is that the innovation literally darkened the already dark and cold winter days. People lost not only an hour of sleep, but more or less a bright morning. Even Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin admitted at a meeting with football fans that it was “hard for him to get up in the morning” and that he had already discussed the problem with Dmitry Medvedev.

This is not some kind of fetish,” Putin said. - We can come back to this. We will consult with experts and the public in the broad sense of the word. If the public believes that things were better before, then so be it.

We also decided to consult with experts. And it turned out: among pundits, surprisingly, there is no consensus on which time it is better for us to live - summer or winter.

Version 1: Now we live wrong

It would be more reasonable to introduce year-round winter time, which is only one hour ahead of astronomical time. This difference is almost invisible to the human body. But year-round summer time has a detrimental effect on biorhythms and worsens well-being. As, indeed, the seasonal change of clocks, says Semyon Rapoport, Doctor of Medical Sciences, professor at Moscow Medical University. THEM. Sechenova.People adapt to time gaps in different ways. At 15 years old, a person will not even notice that the hands have been moved. But elderly and sick people need not a day or two, but weeks to adapt to new times. Diseases often worsen. Another argument against year-round summer time is that there is not enough light. This is dangerous because it threatens depression. This social problem has long existed in countries such as Sweden and Norway - they have very short daylight hours, and these countries rank first in suicide rates. Now we live just like them. This means that we will have the same problems.

Version 2: Now we live correctly

We must remain in the time in which we live now. It is correct, our body has already tuned in for this time,” says Elena Belskaya, associate professor of the 2nd Department of Internal Medicine of the Belarusian Medical University, candidate of medical sciences. - Experience shows that when people switch to a new time, their performance decreases and their blood pressure increases. Even small children suffer.

Many people say that now we do not have enough light. But that's not true. We miss the sun's rays, but it's not the time that's to blame, it's the weather. By the way, if we live endlessly in the light, we will also experience severe depression. The body will lack melatonin, the sleep hormone.

For a long time, people have not been subject to the seasons and the transition to daylight saving time and back - only to the work schedules of offices and institutions that do not change throughout the year.

What to do?

We need to discuss what time to live by in winter. There are two options: move the arrows back and forth in autumn and winter or stay at the same time all year round. The full use of daylight is the same in both cases.

To always know the exact time, it is not enough to have a good watch. We also need a standard against which these watches will be checked. For many years, such a standard was the day - the period of rotation of the Earth around its axis - and the second - 1/86400 of a day. The period of rotation of the Earth is constant with an accuracy of one thousandth of a second, but with the development of science and technology, even such high accuracy turned out to be insufficient.

In the 1950s, physicists proposed using as a reference unit of time the duration of a certain amount of electromagnetic oscillations emitted and absorbed by atoms during the transition from one energy state to another. This is how the standard atomic clocks appeared, the stability of the second of which is now almost a million times higher than the stability of the Earth’s rotation. The era of atomic time has begun.

The duration of the atomic second can be chosen arbitrarily, but of course it must be close to the second determined by the rotation of the Earth. After all, we live on Earth, our life largely depends on its rotation, and therefore astronomical and atomic time should not diverge noticeably. If such a discrepancy reaches several fractions of a second, the atomic clock, from which the well-known signals of exact time are transmitted, is moved forward or backward a second in order to combine atomic time with astronomical time. Such transfers are allowed only twice a year - on June 30 or December 31, and they are made all over the world.

Atomic time coordinated with astronomical time is called Universal Coordinate Time; This is the time we live by.

So far we have talked about systems for counting time within a day. Now let's get acquainted with the systems for counting the day itself, which are called calendars.

The calendar year we live by consists of 365 days; Every fourth year is one day longer. This year is called a leap year.

Why do we need a leap year? It turns out that it is necessary to coordinate the calendar year with the solar year, which is the time of one revolution of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The length of the solar, or "tropical" year, as astronomers call it, is 365.2422 days, or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds.

Thus, the solar year is longer than the calendar year by about 6 hours, and over 4 years this difference is almost a whole day. If this is not taken into account, the beginning of the calendar year will slowly move through the seasons and eventually fall from winter to summer. To prevent this from happening, a leap year is introduced.

For the first time, a calendar of 365 days with one leap year was adopted in ancient Rome in 46 BC under Julius Caesar. This calendar became known as the Julian or old style.

For a long time, the Julian calendar was considered perfectly accurate, but in fact this is not entirely true. Even with leap years, the Julian calendar year is 11 minutes 14 seconds shorter than the solar year. It is easy to imagine that in 128 years the difference between the calendar and astronomical counting of time will be a whole day.

Such a minor difference naturally could not play an important role for most people, but the clergy, who demanded the punctual fulfillment of church holidays, was concerned about the discrepancy between the calendar and nature.

One of the most important religious holidays is Easter, which should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first spring full moon. The spring full moon was considered to be the full moon that occurs shortly after the vernal equinox, i.e. March 21. But over the centuries, the spring equinox began to gradually slide away from March 21 due to a discrepancy between the calendar and the astronomical counting of time. The definition of Easter Day has become very complex, confusing, and sometimes simply incorrect. To avoid this, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Gregory XIII, issued a special decree on calendar reform.

According to this decree, after October 4, 1582, it was necessary to count not October 5, but October 15. This eliminated the error of the Julian calendar that had accumulated over the previous 12 centuries.

To prevent this kind of error from accumulating in the future, it was decided that of the years that end with two zeros, for example, 1600, 1700, 1800, only those whose number of hundreds is divisible by 4 (1600, 2000, 2400) are considered leap years. The remaining century years should be simple, while according to the Julian calendar they were considered leap years. With the new calculation, a calendar error of one day will accumulate only over 3300 years, which, of course, has no practical significance. The new calendar system became known as the Gregorian calendar or new style.

To be fair, it must be said that our calendar is still not very convenient for life. So, if you need to determine what day of the week will be on such and such a date in the current year, you must definitely look at the calendar or make calculations; for other years the task becomes even more difficult. Months are divided into different numbers of days (30, 31, 28/29), the length of all quarters is different.

Why do we use such an inconvenient calendar, is it possible to change it? Of course you can.

A special commission has been organized at the UN to reform our calendar. Several hundred proposals for the design of a new calendar were sent to this commission. The most interesting of them are the following two proposals:

1. The calendar year consists of 13 months of 28 days each, so each month has exactly 4 weeks. The same numbers of all months fall on the same day of the week, for example, the first day of any month will always be Monday, the second - Tuesday, etc.

Since such a year will last 364 days instead of the usual 365, after the last day of the year a special day without a number or name is introduced - it is proposed to be considered New Year's Day. In leap years there will be two such days without number.

This thirteen-month calendar has one significant drawback - the number of months is different from what we are used to. We need to come up with a name for the thirteenth month and build our whole life around the extra month.

Exactly one year ago - at 2.00 Moscow time on October 26, 2014 - the residents of Russia moved their clocks back one hour. This is how the country switched to winter time, which we still live by today. On October 27, 2014, the number of time zones in Russia was reduced from eleven to nine - now 52 regions live according to capital time.

The decision to abolish daylight saving time was made on the basis of expert assessments: for example, Rospotrebnadzor specialists argued that

The old system had a negative impact on the health of people, especially children. The abolition of winter time, implemented in 2011, also had a negative impact on animals, from which farmers suffered. The Ministry of Industry also stated that switching the switches does not save energy.

Last year, astronomer Oleg Ugolnikov explained why moving the clock back an hour will not solve the listed problems: “The answer is that in winter you will still have to get up in the dark, and the gained hour will fall at the beginning of working hours, when there is no special meaning in it anymore .

The length of the climb in sunlight will only increase by two months. Moreover, all these effects could be removed by introducing seasonal winter time, as is done in many countries of the world,” the astronomer said.

“As for the bright evenings, they were after the end of the working day already in February. At the end of April it is light until 21:00. In the case of reform, there will be light only until 20 o’clock - we will lose a much-needed light hour in the evening. He will switch to an interval of five to six hours in the morning, where absolutely no one needs him,” Ugolnikov added.

The clock change nevertheless took place, and we still live on winter time.

This is how it happened historically

“Disorder” over time in Russia began in 1917 - it was then that the Provisional Government, by decree of June 27, introduced summer time from July 1 to August 31, 1917, and from March 1 to September 1 of the following year, 1918. However, the clock hands returned an hour only on December 27, 1917.

In subsequent years, the transition to daylight saving time was carried out without any order, and in 1921 it happened twice - on February 14 and March 20. After 1922, the country used standard time (the officially approved time for each time zone), without changes to summer or winter time.

On June 21, 1930, the clocks were moved forward an hour, and on September 30 they were brought back - this regime became known as maternity time.

On April 1, 1981, the Council of Ministers of the USSR again ordered the clocks to be moved forward relative to maternity time. Because of this, summer time in many regions began to be two hours ahead of standard time.

Until 2010, the transition to and from daylight saving time occurred every year, but the date of the clock change changed four times. From 1996 to 2010, we moved the clocks to the last Sunday of March and October.

In 2011, on the initiative of Dmitry Medvedev, it was decided to cancel the October clock setting back an hour, but last year legislators again decided to change the course of time and the country switched from summer to winter.

What about them?

Currently, most European countries (except Russia, Belarus and Iceland), the USA (except some states), Canada, Mexico, Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine switch to daylight saving time. In the Southern Hemisphere, summer time is used in some states of Australia and Brazil, New Zealand, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Namibia.

Blue indicates countries that apply daylight saving time, orange indicates countries where the transition has been abolished; red - countries where daylight saving time has never occurred.

Paul Eggert

It is worth noting that at latitudes close to the equator, switching to daylight saving time is impractical, since the dark and light hours of the day last approximately the same, 12 hours each.

Some countries that have refused to change clock hands use another method to save the daylight hours - they shift the operating hours of enterprises and educational institutions.

This means that in summer people start working earlier, in winter - later, and the shift can exceed one hour.

If you want to sleep, go to New Zealand

However, how Scientists' research shows, the duration of sleep of residents of different countries does not depend on the presence or absence of a clock change law. The researchers used data collected by mobile apps that track human sleep patterns. In total, in this way, data on more than 941 thousand residents of different countries of the world fell into the hands of scientists.

It turned out that residents of South Korea and Saudi Arabia sleep the least - the average duration of their nightly sleep was 6 hours 2 minutes. They go to bed at 0.16 and 0.39, respectively. New Zealanders get the best sleep, going to bed at 11:29 p.m. and sleeping for 7 hours and 27 minutes.

At the same time, residents of Russia go to bed later than everyone else - at 1.05, at the same time as the Greeks and residents of the United Arab Emirates, but sleep on average 6 hours 45 minutes.

The rhythm of life in some countries may also seem unusual for residents of Russia. So, in China, many people are already on their feet at five o’clock in the morning, and at six o’clock in parks and on the streets you can meet large groups of Chinese practicing qigong or taijiquan - specific types of physical exercises similar to health-improving gymnastics.

In Chinese schools, classes also start early - at 7.00 - 7.30. However, in Brazil, things are about the same - there schoolchildren sit at their desks at 7.00.

In countries with a hot climate - Spain, Italy, Greece - you can encounter an afternoon rest, a siesta, when most public institutions, including cafes, restaurants and even some museums, are closed for several hours.

The latter is especially typical for small Spanish towns - in some of them the siesta can last about three hours.

In our country there are no such bright traditions associated with sleep and rest, so Russians can only do one thing - get used to the regime established by the law “On the Calculation of Time” and hope that the American scientists who declare the dangers of switching to daylight saving time are right: that because of During the transition to daylight saving time, people lose about half an hour of sleep per night.

In the section on the question Scientists! I ask you again! What time are we living in now? Really or shifted. What is not clear? given by the author Flush the best answer is Shifted 2 hours forward.
Noon - 14:00 now.
Omich
Enlightened
(47272)
According to summer time, noon is 2 hours ahead - at 14:00.
Do you yourself understand what you are asking?

Reply from Ilya Sychev[guru]
According to the shift...

Reply from Alexey Grigoriev[newbie]
present. If I understand correctly, the shift will be in the fall

Reply from Sit[guru]
Now we live in a time that is 2 hours ahead of astronomical time

Time, maternity
Officially set time in cities and countries. For example, in winter in Russia the official time is 1 hour ahead of standard time, and in the summer (during the introduction of summer time) it is 2 hours ahead. Maternity time is introduced to make fuller use of daylight during the summer months of the year. To do this, in many countries, by special government decree (decree), the clocks running according to standard time are moved forward 1 hour. This is done either only for the summer period, or for the entire time. European countries (with the exception of Iceland), the USA, Canada, and more than 50 countries in total switch to summer time every year. Since June 16, 1930, on the territory of the USSR, clock hands have been constantly moved 1 hour ahead against standard time - this is what is called maternity time. In addition, since 1981, summer time began to be introduced on the territory of the USSR, advancing standard time by another 1 hour versus maternity leave. Typically, daylight saving time changes at 2 o'clock on the last Sunday in March, and winter time changes at 3 o'clock on the last Sunday in October. However, from 1982 to 1986, by decision of the USSR government, maternity time was abolished in 30 regions and autonomous republics of Russia and in the Baltic republics. In 1990, by decision of local authorities, it was abolished in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the spring of 1991, the USSR government was forced to abolish maternity time throughout the country. The cancellation was combined with the transition to daylight saving time. Therefore, in March 1991, when switching to summer time, the clocks were not moved, and we switched to universal summer time. In the fall, 1 hour was added and we switched to universal winter (i.e., standard) time. However, this brought significant economic losses, and on October 23, 1991, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR decided to return to the old, “maternity” time in Russia. It was carried out on January 19, 1992: all clocks in Russia were moved forward 1 hour. This was not done only in the Astrakhan, Volgograd, Samara, Saratov, Kirov regions and the Udmurt Republic.