Circadian Rhythm: Seven Essentials for Smarter Sleep

Circadian Rhythm: Seven Essentials for Smarter Sleep

You wake to an alarm clock or a phone ringtone and reach over to switch it off. You scroll through the overnight flood of news, sports, and entertainment updates, check your social media apps, and read emails and messages from colleagues and friends. Your mouth is dry, your mind is already racing, and you are thinking about everything you need to do this morning. Light filters through the bedroom curtains, and the TV standby light at the foot of your bed keeps blinking at you, as if reminding you to think back on how you slept last night.

Welcome to a new day. Did you sleep well last night? Do you know how to get a good night’s sleep?

Sleep is becoming a growing problem around the world. In the UK, people sleep an average of 6.5 hours a night. In addition, one-third of the population gets only 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night. In the United States, 20% of people sleep less than 6 hours on workdays, and the average sleep time in Japan is even shorter. Most people choose to “catch up” on sleep over the weekend. Nearly half say that stress and anxiety keep them from falling asleep.

At present, total sleep duration may not be the most important thing. What truly matters is a natural process that has been with humanity from the beginning. Yet nearly every aspect of modern life is stripping us of it. Artificial light, new technology, shift work, sleeping pills, business travel, checking your phone the moment you wake up, working late into the night—and even rushing out the door without breakfast and heading straight to the office—are all pushing us away from that natural process. As a result, problems with rest and recovery arise.

In one sense, the most important thing about sleep is mastering the rhythm of day and night: allowing the body to follow nature’s rules instead of arrogantly ignoring them. In a modern world that is moving ever farther from nature, aligning ourselves with circadian rhythms is not easy. Here are several effective principles.

• 1. Get outdoors! Let daylight reset your body clock, rather than relying on artificial light.
• 2. Take time to understand your circadian rhythm and how it affects your life. Encourage your family and friends to learn about it too.
• 3. Learn your peaks and dips, and monitor the changes that naturally occur in your body. Use a wearable fitness tracker to measure them.
• 4. The highest-quality sleep tends to occur around 2–3 a.m. If you only go to sleep after sunrise, you are working against your biological clock.
• 5. Slow down in the morning. Throwing yourself into chaos the moment you wake up will eventually wear down your body. Sleep quality is closely connected to what we do after waking.
• 6. At night, blue light is the wrong kind of light. Dim it as much as possible. Make greater use of red light, yellow light, or even candlelight.
• 7. Imagine yourself on an island, sitting by a campfire: what in your current routine conflicts with that scene? How can you correct it? Make a few simple changes to your daily schedule so that your body functions more in tune with the human circadian rhythm.