LOS ANGELES: Starting daylight saving time in March will mean more late sunrises and dark mornings. Daylight saving time begins three weeks earlier this year and lasts one week longer — welcome news for people who relish the extra afternoon light to garden, ride a bicycle, walk the dog or just take out the trash when they can still see the curb.But the extension, which begins on Sunday, could actually make millions of Americans feel less sunny.

For those people — suffering from seasonal affective disorder or its milder cousin, winter blues — the corresponding reduction in morning light may worsen or lengthen their depression, doctors and mood experts say.

“We’re very worried about it,” says Michael Terman, director of New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s Centre for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms. “It’s the early morning light exposure that allays the symptoms of winter depression. The later the sun rises, the more likely we are to get depressed.”

Early morning light sets the body’s clock to gear up for the day’s activities, but the later sunrise in the winter — and a society based on the clock instead of nature — causes a delay in the normal cycle, says Terman. For some people, this can lead to winter-induced depression, known as seasonal affective disorder.

Such depression usually creeps up in late fall, slams down hard in January and February and lifts in early May. Besides a poor mood, symptoms include low energy, problems sleeping, fatigue, weight gain, reduced concentration and increased appetite, especially for carbohydrates.

Most people with the condition feel their normal selves in the summer months.

“In the summer, these same people are dynamos,” says Dr. David H. Avery, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of Washington.

About three per cent to five per cent of Americans are thought to have seasonal affective disorder, says Terman, although it’s far more common in the northern latitudes than in the Sunbelt.

An additional 15 per cent to 20 per cent of people experience a lesser form of the disorder, called winter doldrums or winter blues.

They are not diagnosed with clinical depression, but they clearly don’t feel as chipper in the winter months.

Even the residents of sunny Southern California are not immune. Byron Acevedo, 36, says he feels depression coming on each October. “It’s amazing how it affects me,” says the computer technician, who works in Glendale. “I realise the days are getting cold and dark. I just feel sad.”

Out of sync: The daylight saving time extension was authorised by Congress in 2005 largely to save energy. There was little discussion of the effect on mood, although some mental health experts — including Avery — wrote to Congress before its 2005 vote warning lawmakers not to mess with the nation’s mood.

Research shows it’s the delay in sunrise — not the overall hours of sunlight — that has the biggest effect on mood during winter. People in the north have more depression, but so do people who live on the western edge of each time zone — where the sun rises later. —Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service

BRUSSELS: European trade officials seem to be taking a softer line on the use of anti-dumping measures in a shift that is unsettling some of the continent’s industry but could please bargain-hunting shoppers, trade experts say.

They detect a shift beginning even before the EU trade chief ends a review of the sensitive rules.

Lawyers and specialist diplomats say Peter Mandelson’s team has given more weight than usual to the interests of EU importers and consumers, rather than businesses feeling the heat from foreign competition, in some recent anti-dumping cases.

Welcomed by trade “liberals”, the apparent change worries some EU governments who usually want more protection for industries they say are threatened by under-priced imports.

“It’s too early to say for sure but there seems to be a shift taking place,” a trade diplomat said.The rise of China and other low-cost exporters has turned the minutia of the EU’s “trade defence instruments” (TDI), chiefly its anti-dumping duties, a new battlefield for the opposing business and political interests within the bloc.

With the EU likely to be as split over dumping reform as it was over the shoes duties, there is little chance of sweeping change as a result of Mandelson’s review, officials say.

European retailers say they are waiting to see how Brussels will deal with dumping cases in the future.—Reuters