SLEEP GROOVE isn’t just another sleep book. Written by Olivia Walch, Arcascope’s CEO, it offers readers an accessible and entertaining tour of the complexities of circadian rhythms and sleep. The book breaks down advanced concepts with easy-to-understand explanations, using humorous analogies, eye-catching illustrations, and comics to guide readers through the often misunderstood machinery of their […]
Maximizing light is not the goal for health
Imagine it’s summer, and you live way up north. The sun is up for 22 hours of the day. Sunlight is good for sleep, right? Your sleep must be great. Except, no. It sucks. And the reason it sucks isn’t just because it’s hard to sleep when it’s bright outside (people in northern latitudes know […]
Yet another blog about permanent Daylight Saving Time
Let’s start with a couple obvious things. If you lived in a bunker, and you never ever saw the sun, the choice between permanent Daylight Saving Time and permanent Standard Time would really not matter to you. We could just pick one and roll with it, and you would continue to be a person who lives […]
Give Your Circadian Rhythms the Gift of Sunlight This Holiday Season
Did you know that during a typical workday, you get far less light exposure than you would outdoors? That’s because indoor lighting is no match for the brightness of natural sunlight, and this difference has a big impact on your body’s internal clock (aka your circadian rhythms). This matters because your circadian rhythms rely on […]
Circadian Amplitude to the Max
Let’s say I want to boost circadian amplitude as much as I can. What light/dark schedule should I put myself on? This is a very tough question to answer experimentally, given how many possible light/dark schedules there are (infinite) and how expensive experiments like this can be (near infinite). But mathematical modeling can give us […]
Daylight Saving Time: Navigating Sleep Disruptions
The end of Daylight Saving Time (DST) is the good one of the two time changes, since we gain the opportunity for an extra hour of sleep instead of losing one. But before you set your clocks back and enjoy that extra rest, it’s important to understand how sudden changes can disrupt your daily routine. […]
Circadian Rhythms Have an Understandability Problem
“If you want to become an earlier chronotype, get more zeitgeber during your phase advance region and less zeitgeber during your phase delay region.” My head is in my hands. At parties, if no one stops me, I will often rant about math’s UI/UX problem. Listen, I say. We just casually drop that sin-1(x) is […]
Measuring Circadian Amplitude
This blog is the spiritual sequel to our last blog post on ways of measuring sleep regularity. Unlike the last one, though, which was based on an excellent review article, this post is Olivia’s off-the-cuff (and extremely wonkish) thoughts on the topic of circadian amplitude. There’s a reason for a lack of formality, though, which […]
Time is Literally a Whole Other Dimension: How Chronomedicine will Revolutionize Healthcare
Recall, if you will, that elementary school classic, “Guess How Many Beans Are In The Jar.” Over the years, I’ve guessed at many beans in many jars, but none sticks with me like the first: Halloween, 1998. I was dressed as the Mona Lisa. The jar was filled with jelly beans. I counted all the […]
Nap Planner Science Snapshot
The nap planner scores naps based on the following: with more dimensions to come. How do we estimate these things? We run hundreds of simulations of how your body’s clock is shaped by your activity patterns in the normal course of running Arcashift. The nap scores are natural extensions of these simulations, taking on the […]