Do you need sleep, or do you need something else?
Some fresh circadian ideas to help you stop feeling like crap every day (especially for puberty, motherhood, and menopause)
When we introduce circadian rhythm stabilization techniques, sleep is usually the first thing people notice improving.
Next is usually mood.
And then over time, we often see a reduction in chronic health symptoms.
For me, the chronic health conditions that have reduced year over year were related to my immune system: seasonal allergies & allergic contact dermatitis.
During the years my immune system symptoms were the worst, I wouldn’t have thought to mention sleep as a problem.
I slept every night, at least as well as I ever had, and I was actually sleeping much better than my worst sleep years in high school.
So if you are sleeping, but still feeling chronically tired, unrested, and suffering from health conditions… what’s going on?
Alternatively, if you know you aren’t sleeping so well (for example, it’s very common in puberty, motherhood and menopause), I want to share this same little shift that may be the key you need.
This post is for you if:
You sleep every night but still feel like crap
You have super interrupted sleep (probably due to your stage of life) and you feel like crap
This feeling like crap is an indication your body is shunting the effects of circadian disruption around your body.
When this is the case, you can’t actually correct course by “fixing your sleep.”
The rules of circadian rhythmicity mean you can’t target sleep directly.
The reason you can’t target sleep directly is sleep is not an input of the circadian rhythm.
If sleep isn’t an input of the circadian rhythm, what is it?
Sleep is caused by the circadian rhythm, but sleep does not cause the circadian rhythm
It turns out sleep is an output of the circadian rhythm.
The output “sleep” is actually an effect of the inputs of the circadian rhythm.
Instead of worrying about sleep, you might need to shift your attention to your:
light/dark cycle
your feed/fast cycle
activity/rest cycle
socializing/solitude schedule
Circadian health in its truest form is so liberating because you don’t necessarily have to time your sleep any particular way!
Days = warm, bright, feasted, social, active
Nights = cool, dim, fasted, quiet, restful
You have to keep your circadian inputs aligned to the sun for this kind of circadian health to be effective.
Sleep health vs circadian health
To get back to our original question of how you can feel like crap even if you sleep well, or if you are in a stage of life where your body is expecting sleep to be disrupted due to the hormonal flux and developmental demands (puberty, motherhood, menopause)… you might just need to tune your day/night circadian cues to have this crappy feeling go away.
If you tune your circadian inputs to the sun, your circadian outputs—including sleep—will naturally fall into balance.
For more on these topics, please you may enjoy some of these posts:
And some sleep testimonials I’ve received for inspiration for you in your sleep journey:
So far I've changed two things and my mornings are now radically different. I was turning off multiple alarms in the morning and falling asleep between them, even if they were five minutes apart. I was also having lucid dreams, lucid nightmares, and mild sleep paralysis between 6am and 8am. I've changed my evening lighting to all dim and warm (only candlelight in the bathroom past sunset), and I sleep with a blackout mask. I'm suddenly, consistently waking up around 6:45am clear headed and not falling back asleep immediately. It is a *joy*.
~Brighter Days, Darker Nights Subscriber
And I know you said the 8 consolidated hours aren't necessarily the answer but I'm pretty sure I slept from about 10-6:30 and I'm daily certain I didn't move lol. This is unheard of for me!
~Private consulting client
My sleep schedule for a couple of months before the workshop was roughly 3am-11am on any average "night" and my partner didn't even have a consistent schedule of any kind, battling bouts of insomnia and other pain issues that kept her tossing and turning on the couch most nights. Now we are adjusting our lighting to "circadian mode" at sun down, then both headed to bed a couple of hours later (rarely later than 9) and waking up refreshed with the sun most mornings. It's AMAZING!
~Sleep workshop attendee
Have questions for me about sleep?
Ask away in the comments and I’ll do my best to reply here or in a future post. I’m thinking about teaching a live class, too. Let me know if you’d be interested in attending.
Updates from Nikko:
Community invitation: learn the Circadian Basics for free inside the QBC community on Mighty Networks (I’ll meet you there as your host!)
Live teaching for Quantum/Practitioner tier subscribers this Saturday, May 3rd: Quantum Complaints and Complications of the 3rd Trimester. Sign up here.
I put up blackout curtains in the evening. In the morning however it goes from blackout to bright light when I take them down. I get natural light before I turn on any lights but is this sudden bright sunlight okay or is there a better way to do it so I get a more gradual transition?