By Julia Musto

Copyright independent

Stanford Medicine researchers suggest that abandoning the twice-yearly clock changes for daylight saving time could significantly improve public health.

Their findings indicate that permanently adopting standard time could prevent 300,000 strokes and reduce the number of people living with obesity by 2.6 million annually.

These health benefits arise from avoiding disruptions to the body’s natural circadian rhythm, which regulates essential functions such as sleep, hormones, and digestion.

While permanent daylight saving time would also offer advantages, it would achieve only about two-thirds of the positive health outcomes compared to permanent standard time.

Daylight saving time, which sees clocks set back in November, has been observed across much of the US since the mid-1960s, with some political figures, including Donald Trump, having previously lobbied for its permanent adoption.