What can you do when your ideal (circadian) lifestyle goes up in flames?
www.brighterdaysdarkernights.com
A: Pick and choose time cues you can control.
The first part of this is about tweaking poor lighting to be better; the second part is about utilizing other circadian time cues besides light.
Why light matters so much for your circadian rhythm:
Light is more powerful than anything else when it comes to circadian rhythms, and is even more powerful than any known drug.
Improper light alone can de-synchronize circadian rhythms.
Proper light alone can synchronize circadian rhythms.
This is why light is called the primary zeitgeber (zeit = time, geber = giver).
Even though light is the most important cue, I think it can also be one of the most difficult to get a handle on.
Lighting is built in to spaces, and at present, most people don’t know about optimal indoor lighting or how to have it installed.
So when you are in someone else’s space—whether for fun, work, or whatever—you are also in their light.
I do know people that travel with circadian lighting so they can actually switch out bulbs and use full-spectrum lights in the day and red/amber lights at night.
But if you can’t bring your own, maybe you can control some aspects of it.
Since you can always go outside to get perfect light for the time of day, evenings can be the most challenging part of the day when away from home.
Maybe it’s an emergency trip to the hospital. Maybe you yourself were called in to work a night shift. Maybe you are just vacationing and the place you are staying has really, really, stark lighting.
Here’s a post I wrote early on about how evening light affects people differently (healthy adults can show a 50-fold difference in sensitivity to evening light):
And in that post, you can read about how it’s not just the light you are under at present, but also how your body has come to adapt to particular conditions.
If you have been living in a circadian way, this can make going back into a non-circadian environment have a more drastic effect.
This more drastic effect can happen because your body may not be as acclimated to the disruption as those who live like that all the time.
So maybe could maybe make it a little dimmer at night. Even if it’s only a little dimmer, turning off extra lights that aren’t strictly needed can help your body’s nighttime rhythms.
Maybe you can also control the angle the angle of the light.
Light coming from overhead tells your body midday.
Light coming from down low tells your body it’s either sunset or sunrise.
So if it’s midday and you are inside, see if you can get the overhead lights on and/or open a window to let sunlight in.
If it’s evening or night, see if you can turn overhead lights off in favor of some table lamps or lighting that is lower down.
So yes, light is the most powerful cue, but just because light is the most powerful cue does not mean it’s the only cue.
The rest of this post is about leaning in to the other time cues when you don’t have control over your light environment.
How can you still support your circadian health when your light environment is crap?
First option:Lean in to your warm/cool cycle.
Heat is actually just another part of the light spectrum.
In nature, light is warmer and darkness is colder.
Your circadian biology will respond to a warm/cold cycle just like a light/dark cycle.
Warm up your daytime environment. Bundle up. Exercise. Cook over a flame stove. Drink a warm beverage. Do anything you can to absorb extra heat in the day.
Cool down your evening environment. Dress down. Avoid exercise routines that will heat you up. Let your body temperature go through its natural decrease through the night and until sunrise.
Second option: Lean in to your social/solitude cycle.
Social cues are important to the circadian rhythms of people of all ages.
This is why it’s hard to fall asleep when someone you care about comes to stay at your house and you haven’t seen them in a long time!
Social cues are actually the most important circadian signals for young babies because they don’t yet have full circadian maturation.
Knowing this, you can strengthen your circadian rhythms just by spending more time with people in the day laughing, telling jokes, working, dancing, or whatever brings you social happiness.
And conversely, at night, make yourself spend time alone or in smaller, more intimate groups so you don’t feel so much social wakefulness when you should be winding down for rest and repair.
Third option: Lean in to your noisy/quiet cycle.
In nature, noises signify the time of day.
There are morning noises, heat of the day noises, evening noises, and night noises.
You can listen for critter noises, like mating calls.
You can listen for environmental noises, like wind and storm patterns.
Tuning into the sonic environment is therefore one of the access points you have to your circadian rhythm.
Extremely loud noises are thought to be disruptive at all times (but especially night).
Think about how in “the wild” loud would usually signify some kind of danger or emergency.
Thus, very loud noises are associated with stress hormones.
If you are going to listen to loud music or run loud machinery, time it with daylight.
Take off the headphones.
Skip the late night blockbusters in surround sound.
Fourth option: Lean in to your feed/fast cycle.
Daylight stimulates the hormones of appetite and digestion, while darkness stimulates the hormones of rest and repair.
If you know your light signals aren’t sending this message to your body, you will have to rely on willpower to keep your metabolism in any semblance of order.
What and when you want to eat in a poor circadian light environment is not reliable :(
It sucks, but restricting carbohydrates to daylight (even if it is only a very short window, as in a polar winter)…
…And making yourself eat breakfast (even if not feeling hungry) can strengthen your circadian rhythms.
A tool that may be helpful for this is digestive bitters shortly before you intend to eat.
Digestive bitters are a traditional way to stimulate appetite and digestion.
And if you’ve been running on coffee, start eating something before having coffee.
You don’t necessarily need to quit the coffee, just get the meal beforehand for the sake of your digestive rhythms.
Fifth option: Lean in to strategic napping.
Napping is valid! Historically, most humans would have had some kind of biphasic (two sleeps per day) or polyphasic (multiple sleeps per day) rest pattern, depending on the time of year.
If you know you’re going to get short-changed on sleep the upcoming night, take a 20 minute nap in the early afternoon.
If you got short-changed on sleep last night, take a 20 minute (or, if you really need to catch up go long and nap for 2 or more hours) any time from mid-morning to early afternoon.
Add it all up to estimate your overall “circadian rhythm”
These different time cues all work together.
“Circadian rhythms” is just a set of words we use to describe a huge variety of processes.
When you have some of these signals and processes out of alignment, you can lean all the more heavily on the other signals to support your overall circadian rhythm.
Ideally, you will be optimizing all these signals all the time, but I thought it would be helpful to lay it out that across time, some of them will be more practical than others.
This is in response to a question I often get about what to do when you can’t be “perfect.”
An example of a disrupted era from my life:
As I write this, I’m thinking back to the fire evacuation I went through in 2021 (there’s a photo from our land below about this).
These are some of the things I wish I would have been more conscious, but in the moment, it can be hard to know what to prioritize.
And maybe that evacuation time is front of mind for me because of the smoke in the air again as we enter another smoke season here in Oregon.
Being smoked out of home while pregnant and then going to the NICU after my baby was born was among the most stressful experiences of my life.
That time was full of all kinds of disruption, circadian and otherwise.
Yet it’s what led me to start this publication, and eventually turned my whole life in a new direction.
Can you say stress-test? A lot of things broke that year, blazing a new trail for my family we would never otherwise have seen.
Destruction can fertilize opportunities for even more beautiful life forms to grow.
Throwback to our land burning up in 2021 (thankfully, all structures were unharmed and the only damage was to our water pipes, which melted and had to be replaced once we were able to return home)
We all face these stress tests from time to time. I’d love to hear your stories of juggling balance and finding resiliency through times that were far, far from “optimal”.
How did you get yourself to sleep during that era?
How did you calm your mind, either during or after all the ash had settled?
How did you keep yourself fed, even through the pit in your stomach?
Did you employ any of the strategies I shared above (light/dark, hot/cold, people/solitude, noise/quiet, feed/fast, or strategic napping)?
What can you do when your ideal (circadian) lifestyle goes up in flames?
What can you do when your ideal (circadian) lifestyle goes up in flames?
What can you do when your ideal (circadian) lifestyle goes up in flames?
A: Pick and choose time cues you can control.
The first part of this is about tweaking poor lighting to be better; the second part is about utilizing other circadian time cues besides light.
Why light matters so much for your circadian rhythm:
Light is more powerful than anything else when it comes to circadian rhythms, and is even more powerful than any known drug.
Improper light alone can de-synchronize circadian rhythms.
Proper light alone can synchronize circadian rhythms.
This is why light is called the primary zeitgeber (zeit = time, geber = giver).
Even though light is the most important cue, I think it can also be one of the most difficult to get a handle on.
Lighting is built in to spaces, and at present, most people don’t know about optimal indoor lighting or how to have it installed.
So when you are in someone else’s space—whether for fun, work, or whatever—you are also in their light.
I do know people that travel with circadian lighting so they can actually switch out bulbs and use full-spectrum lights in the day and red/amber lights at night.
But if you can’t bring your own, maybe you can control some aspects of it.
Since you can always go outside to get perfect light for the time of day, evenings can be the most challenging part of the day when away from home.
Maybe it’s an emergency trip to the hospital. Maybe you yourself were called in to work a night shift. Maybe you are just vacationing and the place you are staying has really, really, stark lighting.
Here’s a post I wrote early on about how evening light affects people differently (healthy adults can show a 50-fold difference in sensitivity to evening light):
We are all different🌅
And in that post, you can read about how it’s not just the light you are under at present, but also how your body has come to adapt to particular conditions.
If you have been living in a circadian way, this can make going back into a non-circadian environment have a more drastic effect.
This more drastic effect can happen because your body may not be as acclimated to the disruption as those who live like that all the time.
So maybe could maybe make it a little dimmer at night. Even if it’s only a little dimmer, turning off extra lights that aren’t strictly needed can help your body’s nighttime rhythms.
Maybe you can also control the angle the angle of the light.
Light coming from overhead tells your body midday.
Light coming from down low tells your body it’s either sunset or sunrise.
So if it’s midday and you are inside, see if you can get the overhead lights on and/or open a window to let sunlight in.
If it’s evening or night, see if you can turn overhead lights off in favor of some table lamps or lighting that is lower down.
So yes, light is the most powerful cue, but just because light is the most powerful cue does not mean it’s the only cue.
The rest of this post is about leaning in to the other time cues when you don’t have control over your light environment.
How can you still support your circadian health when your light environment is crap?
First option: Lean in to your warm/cool cycle.
Heat is actually just another part of the light spectrum.
In nature, light is warmer and darkness is colder.
Your circadian biology will respond to a warm/cold cycle just like a light/dark cycle.
Warm up your daytime environment. Bundle up. Exercise. Cook over a flame stove. Drink a warm beverage. Do anything you can to absorb extra heat in the day.
Cool down your evening environment. Dress down. Avoid exercise routines that will heat you up. Let your body temperature go through its natural decrease through the night and until sunrise.
Second option: Lean in to your social/solitude cycle.
Social cues are important to the circadian rhythms of people of all ages.
This is why it’s hard to fall asleep when someone you care about comes to stay at your house and you haven’t seen them in a long time!
Social cues are actually the most important circadian signals for young babies because they don’t yet have full circadian maturation.
Knowing this, you can strengthen your circadian rhythms just by spending more time with people in the day laughing, telling jokes, working, dancing, or whatever brings you social happiness.
And conversely, at night, make yourself spend time alone or in smaller, more intimate groups so you don’t feel so much social wakefulness when you should be winding down for rest and repair.
Third option: Lean in to your noisy/quiet cycle.
In nature, noises signify the time of day.
There are morning noises, heat of the day noises, evening noises, and night noises.
You can listen for critter noises, like mating calls.
You can listen for environmental noises, like wind and storm patterns.
Tuning into the sonic environment is therefore one of the access points you have to your circadian rhythm.
Extremely loud noises are thought to be disruptive at all times (but especially night).
Think about how in “the wild” loud would usually signify some kind of danger or emergency.
Thus, very loud noises are associated with stress hormones.
If you are going to listen to loud music or run loud machinery, time it with daylight.
Take off the headphones.
Skip the late night blockbusters in surround sound.
Fourth option: Lean in to your feed/fast cycle.
Daylight stimulates the hormones of appetite and digestion, while darkness stimulates the hormones of rest and repair.
If you know your light signals aren’t sending this message to your body, you will have to rely on willpower to keep your metabolism in any semblance of order.
What and when you want to eat in a poor circadian light environment is not reliable :(
It sucks, but restricting carbohydrates to daylight (even if it is only a very short window, as in a polar winter)…
…And making yourself eat breakfast (even if not feeling hungry) can strengthen your circadian rhythms.
A tool that may be helpful for this is digestive bitters shortly before you intend to eat.
Digestive bitters are a traditional way to stimulate appetite and digestion.
And if you’ve been running on coffee, start eating something before having coffee.
You don’t necessarily need to quit the coffee, just get the meal beforehand for the sake of your digestive rhythms.
Fifth option: Lean in to strategic napping.
Napping is valid! Historically, most humans would have had some kind of biphasic (two sleeps per day) or polyphasic (multiple sleeps per day) rest pattern, depending on the time of year.
If you know you’re going to get short-changed on sleep the upcoming night, take a 20 minute nap in the early afternoon.
If you got short-changed on sleep last night, take a 20 minute (or, if you really need to catch up go long and nap for 2 or more hours) any time from mid-morning to early afternoon.
Add it all up to estimate your overall “circadian rhythm”
These different time cues all work together.
“Circadian rhythms” is just a set of words we use to describe a huge variety of processes.
When you have some of these signals and processes out of alignment, you can lean all the more heavily on the other signals to support your overall circadian rhythm.
Ideally, you will be optimizing all these signals all the time, but I thought it would be helpful to lay it out that across time, some of them will be more practical than others.
This is in response to a question I often get about what to do when you can’t be “perfect.”
An example of a disrupted era from my life:
As I write this, I’m thinking back to the fire evacuation I went through in 2021 (there’s a photo from our land below about this).
These are some of the things I wish I would have been more conscious, but in the moment, it can be hard to know what to prioritize.
And maybe that evacuation time is front of mind for me because of the smoke in the air again as we enter another smoke season here in Oregon.
Being smoked out of home while pregnant and then going to the NICU after my baby was born was among the most stressful experiences of my life.
That time was full of all kinds of disruption, circadian and otherwise.
Yet it’s what led me to start this publication, and eventually turned my whole life in a new direction.
Can you say stress-test? A lot of things broke that year, blazing a new trail for my family we would never otherwise have seen.
Destruction can fertilize opportunities for even more beautiful life forms to grow.
We all face these stress tests from time to time. I’d love to hear your stories of juggling balance and finding resiliency through times that were far, far from “optimal”.
How did you get yourself to sleep during that era?
How did you calm your mind, either during or after all the ash had settled?
How did you keep yourself fed, even through the pit in your stomach?
Did you employ any of the strategies I shared above (light/dark, hot/cold, people/solitude, noise/quiet, feed/fast, or strategic napping)?
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