Sleep 'Lightmares' & The Circadian Health

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Today, we’re in the weirdest place mentally when it comes to sleep. We’ve never been so adamant to sleep. We are surrounded with an extravagant sleep market with all the necessary requirements, but we’re still wide awake. From purchasing smartwatches to track our sleep schedule, to buying comfy sleep mattresses, from travelling distances to enjoy a sleep wellness retreat to gobbling up heavenly sleep pills (I mean how can we forget the amazing contribution a Xanax could have in our lives), we’ve tried all the expensive methods to eventually lie down on our mattresses and count “Sheep 1, Sheep 2, Sheep 3,…” till we finally fall asleep. But have you ever been able to conquer all those absurd thoughts revolving inside your tiny brains in order to genuinely have a relaxed sleeping pattern?

For me? NO. I might’ve reached Mr. Sheep the Millionth and still roll over my bed like an insomniac. But what is Insomnia?

Insomnia is a sleep disorder, that has left 1 in 10 people, rolling over their bed, fighting their frustration and tiredness to just Fall Asleep! Is it that difficult?

To term it in a generous way, YES! After weeks of stressful deadlines, absurd thoughts, toxic memories and sleepless nights, I finally managed to pull out my saviour “Mr. Google” to search for the symptoms of Insomnia. My distress matched most of the symptoms of insomnia but just like the saying - “Google can expand your horizons and broaden your perspectives,” I came across two amazing Health terminologies that changed my perspective towards the sleepless epidemic (For once, 2020 is not just about the Pandemic)

Orthosomnia & Circadian Health: The Clocking Pattern we Never Understood

Today, humans face the rising issue of Orthosomnia, a condition where anxiety over sleep tracking causes sleep problems. We sleep with the thought of getting only 3 hours of rest, or OMG, I need to complete this work, right after I wake up, thoughts. We’ve entered into an Unhealthy Lifestyle where we care about getting a generic sleep solution rather than delving into the intriguing reasonings for the same. In a rush to adjust to the fast-paced world, we’ve managed to defy the Human Circadian Biology.

Our bodies have an instilled internal daily clock (circadian rhythms) in our system, that literally controls every system of our body. Right from our sleeping cycle, mood swings to our metabolism performance and immune system, our health is predicted by our lifestyle.

The biological circadian clock resets according to the regular exposures of dark-light cycles that we experience on a daily basis. What we actually need is the sun’s bright blue light in the day to be alert, and the dark light at night to push forward our brain’s sleep and recovery mode.

However, today, we are being exposed to light and dark in the most absurd and unmatched way possible. We blow-up our eyes after sunset and compel our brains into thinking it’s still daytime as we are surrounded with those artificial blue lights from the ever-radiant, contagious screens. Our lifestyle now revolves around the 24/7 culture; Netflix and Chill till we pass out, hours of night conference calls, circadian disruptions due to jet lag and the increasing light pollution that floods our skies at night. Now, this is what we call a “Lightmare,” a situation where our brains confuse night-time as daytime cause of the increasing absurd light exposure we are accustomed to.

As Dr. Steven Lockley puts it: “The absolute key to healthy sleep and circadian rhythms is stable, regularly-timed daily light and dark exposure—our natural daily time cues. Sleep negates light input to the brain, and so keeping a regular sleep pattern will also help maintain regular light-dark exposure. After dusk, when natural light disappears, we must minimize the negative impact of man-made light. In the day, we have evolved to be in the light, ideally sunlight, but if not, high-quality blue-enriched indoor light. Period. Given that most of our body systems express circadian rhythms, ensuring proper alignment of our internal circadian clocks, starting with the management of lighting, will have major impacts on human health.”

While we’ve been obsessed with improving our sleeping patterns by getting more sleep or reducing our caffeine intake, it’s the timing and the LIGHT exposure that we should care about.

Circadian Travel – Jet Lag Solved

How do travel agencies, hotels and resorts promote themselves today? Sleep! With the constant work pressures and tiring life, travellers have started opting for a sleep-focus wellness retreats, with the relaxing comforts and aroma. Resorts are providing every kind of amenity and support to ease guest’s exhaustion. Well they are even using the “circadian” language cause businesses work according to the latest trends.

However, these places forget to concentrate on the most important side-effects of travelling: Jet Lags. Jet lag is caused when our 24-hour sleep/wake, light/dark cycle shifts too suddenly for our circadian rhythms to catch up. This might seem usual, but it’s a massive problem to your health. You might try solving the issue by sleeping during the entire flight ride or taking up a five star reservation.

However, to actually eliminate the jet lag the timing of light exposure is important - not sleep, exercise, caffeine. Thanks to innovation and technology, we now do have an app that focuses on circadian travel – Timeshifter.

Link to the site: https://www.timeshifter.com

From knowing your sleep pattern to understanding your supplement intakes, it provides you with the most appropriate schedule to cure your jet lag. This might have sounded like a promotion but on a serious note it’s one way closer to achieving a healthy lifestyle that the world requires.

Circadian Diet – 2019’s Famous Google Search

From Mediterranean to the Keto Diet, we’ve been conscious about what we’ve been eating since ages. However, the recent trend of the very well-known intermittent fasting caught the eyes of millions of people who wished to reduced weight. Intermittent Diet – a limited food/beverage consumption and a 10 hour window of fasting, saw a huge attraction after people could recognise its effects. However, was it the 10 hour fast, that caused this change?

Well, I was shocked when I read the next piece of information.

The improvements in health is due to the fact that fasting is circadian-synced. This basically means, that our circadian clock works according to our food patterns too. Humans are evolved to digest food during the day and hence eating after the dark, jolts our brains into thinking it’s daytime. The timing of our eating communicates timing information to all the cells in our complex body which allows us to live a healthy life and sleep pattern. The potential of “clock nutrition” and “circadian dieting” is immense and shocking.

Circadian Rhythms rule our physical and mental health. Well now that I’ve read something around it, I feel it will soon be a cause of a mayhem in the Sleep Industry. With such intense positive results, who wouldn’t wish to set their timeline according to the Circadian Health.

Well, who are we kidding! Do you really think a lifestyle like this would be widely accepted around? If the Pandemic has taught us something, it’s the fact that a drastic change in your lifestyle is pretty difficult to deal with!