CNN stated in a recent web piece that Daylight Savings Time adversely impacts the sleep and health of minority populations.
Friday’s article by CNN Health writer Jacqueline Howard stated that Daylight Savings Time frequently interrupts sleep, throws off people’s circadian cycles, and can lead to general health issues.
And because individuals of color have a greater amount of health issues, observing Daylight Savings Time is more hazardous for them.
Dr. Beth Malow, professor of the Sleep Division at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was cited at the beginning of the article as stating, “Daylight saving time is associated with higher risks of sleep loss, circadian misalignment, and unfavorable health repercussions.”
Howard also cited Chandra Jackson, a researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, who stated, “Poor sleep is linked to a variety of negative health outcomes, including obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers, including breast and colon.”
Jackson further by adding, “Many of these health effects are more frequent among the Black population.”
Howard stated, “It’s not that White individuals don’t experience sleep deprivation and its health repercussions; nevertheless, persons of color tend to experience them disproportionately more, and this is considered to be primarily attributable to social structures in the United States.”
CNN reported studies indicating that daylight savings affects people’s sleep and that health problems are more prevalent among people of race.
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Recent research conducted by Dr. César Caraballo-Cordovez of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation revealed that “among more than 400,000 adults in the United States between 2004 and 2018, the prevalence of short and long sleep duration was persistently higher among Black and Hispanic or Latino adults.”
Caraballo-Cordovez identified a few of the variables he believes make it more difficult for minority groups to get enough rest and wellness. He stated, “These include housing circumstances, noise pollution, light pollution, air pollution, stress from many sources, including perceived racial discrimination, and employment or working conditions.”
Howard asserted that “structural racism” might explain these characteristics that make sleeping more difficult for persons of color. She noted, “Many social and environmental determinants of health, like as housing circumstances or job schedules that do not promote sleep, may originate, at least in part, from historical and enduring forms of structural racism.”
She cited Jackson, who described structural racism as “the sum of ways societies perpetuate racial discrimination via mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, salaries, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.”
Howard also mentioned additional supposed manifestations of racism in our society. She noted “the history of discriminatory mortgage lending and assessments in the United States, which influence the living circumstances of people of color; the tendency for primarily white educational districts to get more financing than those serving people of color… including how prejudice against Black women’s hair may contribute to their use of potentially hazardous chemical hair products.
It is claimed that discriminatory policies and practices throughout sectors of society create the physical and social conditions that make it more difficult for Black families to obtain good sleep and raise healthy children.
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