Tag: TIME

Changing Daylight Saving Time Might Reduce Obesity

I knew it was because of Daylight Saving Time that I’m overweight! I just knew it! Okay, perhaps that’s a slight embellishment. My slightly-more-than-ideal weight might be partly due to what I eat and how much (or not much) I exercise. But according to a new study at Stanford University, if our government gets rid of Daylight Saving Time, it could provide incredible health benefits:

The researchers estimate that permanent standard time would prevent about 300,000 cases of stroke per year and reduce the number of people with obesity by 2.6 million, compared to biannual changes. Permanent daylight saving time would also be positive, although with a smaller impact.

So it’s the changing of time that matters, and to some degree, having more daylight. So apparently even if the government never changes the system officially, one could just ignore the time change and be less fat. Works for me! I could switch my sleep habits an hour if that helps me be less overweight. That would surely be easier than eating healthy and exercising more! 🙂

So far I’m having fun with this. However, it is an actual scientific study, and they used mathematical models to simulate this, trying to find the impact of time policies on light exposure and circadian rhythm (your body’s internal clock). But I’m skeptical. Normally I’m all for the use of math and the scientific method, but I think those numerical claims are vastly exaggerated. There might be a real benefit — I’m not arguing that — but preventing 2,600,000 cases of obesity? Whatever.

If we’re not going to change Daylight Saving Time, I’ve got some ideas to improve it, which I’ve discussed before: a better way to fix Daylight Savings Time. Most people would be for one of those plans, I think, but so far it has been ignored.

As far as reducing obesity in America (which is a big problem), I wish changing the clock would be a solution. But I think the best solution is still eating less and exercising more. That strategy is no secret, but perhaps we need a fresh approach to promoting it… (I have an idea, which will be in a future post.)

a better way to fix Daylight Saving Time

It’s no secret that a lot of people have problems with Daylight Saving Time. Most of us don’t mind gaining an extra hour of sleep in the fall, but losing an hour of sleep is problematic. It costs the workforce millions of dollars by people being late and/or tired. There’s also the issue of it getting dark early. I don’t like night time to start at 5:00 PM.

Our representatives in Congress apparently don’t know what to do about it. There’s talk every year of getting rid of it, which is an option. Or, as I have proposed several times here, in the spring we could take the hour away from the workday at 8:00 AM on a Monday. The majority of people would approve of this. (Perhaps we should write our representatives about this idea. Tell your friends to see what they think.)

My favorite idea is switching to the Hobbit calendar (by J.R.R. Tolkien). Changing our system to that one just isn’t practical, though, given all the systems and programs that would have to be changed. But it’s fun to think about.

There is, however, another possible solution that I haven’t heard discussed. What if instead of going forward an hour in the spring, we go back 23 hours? Who wouldn’t like that? (I’m sure there’s someone, but whatever.) Most of us could use an extra 23 hours to rest, relax, and/or get things done. It would be like an extra Saturday, a bonus day off work.

The problem with this radical idea is that it disrupts our calendar. (Side note: did you realize the calendar is already broken? Why do we have a leap year where we add a day?) So to keep the calendar working properly, every four years, instead of adding a day, we take away 3 days. And those 3 days should be Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which according to recent polls are the least popular days. This could also happen in February, since it’s probably the least liked month [citation needed].

What do you think? Too crazy, or awesome? Is there a better idea?

Why doesn’t time ever run backwards?

As you well know, time goes forward.  We cannot go backwards in time — only forward.  But supposedly the laws of physics also work in reverse.  (I don’t remember that from school, but perhaps I was drawing monster trucks that day.)  So why doesn’t the universe ever run backwards?  Physicists have often wondered why time seems to only go forward.  They call this “the arrow-of-time” mystery.  Lorenzo Maccone, an MIT physicist, has spent time contemplating why it doesn’t happen.  (You’re going to enjoy this one, if your brain doesn’t crash.)

If the universe were to run backwards, a cold cup of coffee might spontaneously heat up, or a broken piece of glass might un-break.   (Hold on to your logic, because we’re only getting started!)  These events are governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (degree of disorder) of a closed system never decreases.  Regardless of the fancy scientific terms, things work the way they’re supposed to — in forward motion.

However, Maccone’s “solution” is that “entropy-decreasing events occur all the time”, so there’s really no mystery about the arrow-of-time.  So why don’t we witness these things?   After all, wouldn’t you notice if certain events started running backwards?  I think everyone would.  So how does Maccone explain this?  He says that according to quantum mechanics, if you ever do witness an “entropy-decreasing event”, those memories of the event “will have been erased by necessity”.

Just to clarify, Maccone says you actually have the memories, but then they are subsequently erased.   He says this happens because of “quantum entanglement“.   Basically, you and “the system” have become entangled and cannot properly be described separately.  Obviously, you can’t have this entanglement, so there’s a disentangling process.  Maccone says, “the disentangling operation will erase this entanglement, namely the observer’s memory”.  (Why isn’t the actual event ever erased, where we remember something backwards that once happened but then never happened?)  Anyway, Maccone published a paper that explained his conclusion mathematically.  (I was unable to reach the same conclusion mathematically, unless I multiplied by the page number a few times.)

In layman’s terms, Maccone thinks that because of symmetry, if there are transformations that increase entropy (and there are), then there must be transformations that decrease entropy.  (Is that like saying because a star blows up, then it should eventually unexplode?)

Unfortunately for Maccone, there is no proof of these backward events, because he cannot remember them.  🙂

Not everyone in this field of study agree with Maccone (which is not surprising).  Huw Price, head of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, thinks Maccone is simply trading one mystery for another: “The proposal to explain the thermodynamic arrow in terms of the [quantum] effects of observers has an obvious flaw.  It doesn’t explain why all observers have the same orientation in time. … Why don’t some observers remember what we call the future, and accumulate information towards what we call the past?”  See, I can explain that, and even with common sense!   The past has already happened, but the future hasn’t happened yet.  Is it really that simple?

In the last sentence of the article about this, the writer said, “Whether or not Maccone has solved the mystery of the arrow of time is unclear.”  I can answer that one, too, without even drawing upon the vast reserves of knowledge accumulated from collegiate study.  The answer, in one word, is NO.

some say exercise won’t make you thin

The blogosphere has been abuzz lately about an article in TIME magazine called Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.  It is interesting, because we’ve joked about such things before, yet here’s an article in a credible magazine suggesting it.  But before we dig into it, let me mention that the author of this article exercises regularly and talks about how he isn’t losing fat, yet he weighs only 163 pounds.  Unless he’s abnormally short, that’s not a bad weight for an adult male to be at.   I don’t see how he could be considered fat or obese.  Actually, my “ideal weight” is supposedly 190-200 for my height, so 163 seems too skinny to me.  Anyway, let’s get to the article.

First, let’s start with the author’s premise for his hypothesis:

Like many other people, I get hungry after I exercise, so I often eat more on the days I work out than on the days I don’t.  Could exercise actually be keeping me from losing weight? ~ John Cloud

He also quotes some other experts who back his claim: “In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless,” says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher.  That sounds extreme to me, but I’ll keep reading.

The notion that we eat more because exercise makes us more hungry and thus exercise makes it harder to lose weight sure sounds like something the “Important Doctor” came up with.  The article also mentions the idea that intense sessions of exercise may cause people to reward themselves by eating what they want.  I can see that — it’s much easier to justify a milkshake or snack if you’ve worked out.

Some scientists imply that it’s evolution’s fault that humans can easily get fat.  We don’t have much “brown fat”.  Rats, among other species, have a lot of it, which turns off their mitochondria (which are the cells’ power plants), so they don’t get an energy boost from eating too much — they just get warmer, which helps the calories burn effortlessly.  So for animals like that, it’s really difficult for them to get fat, even if they overeat.  In contrast, humans can barely overeat and yet gain weight, because unused calories get stored in regular “white fat” cells.

One example cited in the article explains why our compensation for exercise keeps us from losing weight:

A standard 20-oz. bottle of Gatorade contains 130 calories.  If you’re hot and thirsty after a 20-minute run in summer heat, it’s easy to guzzle that bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash.  From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.

Well, few people knit these days, but I think it would be fair to replace that part of the example with sitting on the sofa playing video games.  So there’s your proof that playing video games can help you lose more weight than running! (That definitely sounds like something from the “Important Doctor”.)

The article also says that self-control is like a muscle, that it gets weaker when you use it too much.  So if you force yourself to jog for an hour, your capacity for self-control becomes weakened, and you’re more likely to eat pizza than a salad.  (Although I’m always more likely to eat pizza than a salad, given those choices.)

Steven Gortmaker, who heads Harvard’s Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, agrees that exercising makes you more hungry, therefore he’s suspicious of the playgrounds at fast-food restaurants: “Why would they build those?  I know it sounds kind of like conspiracy theory, but you have to think, if a kid plays five minutes and burns 50 calories, he might then go inside and consume 500 calories or even 1,000.”   One study has shown that exercise causes kids to eat an average of 100 calories more than they had just burned.

Of course, some sites have countered the TIME article, with one even saying it is an “Epic Fail”.  The TIME article makes some points, but we don’t have to give in to overeating because we exercise.  And I don’t think self-control is like a muscle from a physiological sense, but the analogy may work if you carry it out further.  The more you resist something, the stronger you get, instead of weaker — after a while.  For example, if you give up cokes, it may be hard for a few days, but eventually you don’t even miss them anymore.  (I know, because I gave them up.)

I reckon what all this debate results in is that you can find a study that backs up whatever lifestyle you want to live.   If you don’t want to exercise, then you shouldn’t, because it makes you gain weight.   But if you want to lose weight, well, it’s hopeless.  (Of course the last one isn’t true — but if you want to blame it on evolution or misinformation or whatever, there’s an excuse.)  To me, it still seems really simple — if you burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight.  Maybe that seems too-good-to-be-true, but it adds up, if you do the math.