I woke up feeling groggy and lazy almost every day in the past school semester leading up to this summer.
I was already doing research on sleep at that point, and I had a general idea about what I was doing wrong, but when I tried to dive deeper into the hundreds of articles on sleep science, I just found myself getting tired and confused. The last few months working as an intern at Arcascope have taught me how to get in sync with my circadian rhythms and taught me of the many subtleties that are involved with supporting your circadian system.
When I started learning about sleep, I found myself asking friends about their habits and experiences with sleep out of curiosity. I quickly realized that almost everyone I talked to had experienced frustrating sleep problems at some point during their lives and had no idea how to deal with them because they were just never taught enough about sleep. I decided that I wanted to give them some of the knowledge that they will need to improve their sleep quality by reflecting on certain essential components of sleep that I have learned about throughout this past summer.
I want to begin this informational recap by stating what I think is the most important factor involved in getting good sleep: Get enough light and get it only when you are supposed to. Getting light, especially bright light, at the wrong times causes an advance or delay to your circadian clock which essentially means that you’re giving yourself jet lag without ever having to leave your room. Light is the strongest signal to the human circadian system and it can do some amazing things when used correctly. Bright light has the ability to affect the amplitude of your circadian clock, and if you time it right, can allow you to cross time zones faster than you otherwise would. However, this kind of entrainment schedule can be especially hard to follow given the pervasiveness of screen use at night. The presence of almost any light, particularly above 50 lux, has been shown to have a melatonin suppressing effect that can make the process of falling or staying asleep difficult.
Using light as effectively as possible is not just about timing and brightness but also about daily regularity. Previous light history has been shown to affect your circadian clocks current sensitivity to light, which makes paying attention to your light exposure important to maintain your healthy sleep habits. Poor sleep regularity has been linked to many health complications ranging from subdued cognitive performance all the way to inflammation. Recently, some new metrics have been created to quantify sleep regularity which may give clinicians the chance to make more well-informed decisions regarding recommendations for their patients’ sleep health.
The timing and brightness of light, as well as the regularity of your sleep schedule, are three components that have an immense influence on overall sleep health. My personal experience in school so far has left me lacking this key knowledge on how to promote my sleep efficiency. Learning about what to be cognizant of in regards to my sleep habits has greatly increased my alertness in the early morning, and I still have lots of room to improve upon my habits. The crux of my argument here is that just being aware of the things that can mess with your sleep will inherently allow you to avoid bad situations and improve the quality of your sleep.
This post was written by Arcascope’s intern, Ali Abdalla. Thanks Ali!
