January is the ultimate “new year, new me” season. So, it’s a great time to think about fresh habits. That’s why I wanted to drop this little reminder: syncing up with your circadian rhythms can boost your health and energy. Why? Because these rhythms play a big role in everything from when we feel awake […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
