How to Sync Up Your Biological Clock for Better Health, Sleep, Mood & Performance | Lynne Peeples
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Research shows that your awareness is going to follow a circadian rhythm. There are certain hours of the day that your brain is just primed to work faster. And similarly for your muscles and the other elements that affect your speed and your strength and your endurance. And this depends on your personal body clocks. So again, that chronotype curve, depending on where you fall on that, those hours of the day might be different.

When we throw our circadian system out of whack, so many potential health repercussions can come. And scientists are linking more and more to circadian disruption. Metabolism, digestion, our immune system, our ability to be alert, all these things are tied to our circadian clocks.

So have you ever had one of those days where nothing seems to click? Your mind is foggy, your energy is zapped, everything feels like an uphill battle. And then on the flip side, I'm sure you can recount periods where you were just simply firing on all cylinders, razor sharp focus, boundless energy reserves, able to handle stress, solving problems with ease and operating at your peak. What if I told you the difference doesn't necessarily come down to luck or willpower or how smart you are or how hard you work?

that we each have a powerful internal clockwork, regulating our physical, emotional, and cognitive capacities in a cycle. And when we live in harmony with this inner timekeeper, we unlock all of this powerful capacity. But when it falls out of sync, everything becomes an uphill battle.

So maybe you often drag in the mornings, no matter the sleep that you've had, hit an afternoon slump or surge with energy in the late evening as others wind down. These are hints that your circadian rhythms, your body's biological clocks,

may be misaligned with the choices you're making, the way you're living your life, and the way you're even working. My guest today understands these rhythms intimately. Lynn Peoples is an award-winning science journalist who has pulled back the curtain on these powerful inner timekeepers. Before becoming a writer, she spent years as a biostatician, analyzing data from HIV and environmental health studies. She's the author of the illuminating book, The Inner Clock, which is a book about the

Thank you so much for joining us.

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I've been fascinated with the notion of how we function, how our body regulates itself, how we get into dysregulation, and the whole idea of us having one or a collection of sort of internal body clocks. And I would imagine a lot of people have heard the phrase, I don't know, body clock or circadian rhythm, but really don't know what it is or what it means or how it functions in the body. So I feel like maybe that's a good starting point for us. When we talk about a body clock or a circadian rhythm, what are we actually talking about?

Yeah, we're actually talking about a lot of clocks. So our bodies are filled with trillions of tiny timekeepers. Nearly every cell in your body has a clock. And these clocks are designed, evolution created these clocks to work in coordination with each other so that like all your body systems are doing the right things at the right times.

That's, you know, metabolize your food, digest, metabolize your food. It's when you sleep, it's when your body should be most put up its defenses highest for invading pathogens, ultraviolet radiation.

when you're strong and fast. So all these physiological ebbs and flows throughout the day are part of your circadian rhythm. And you have one, you have a master clock in the brain, master in quotes, because there's some new evidence suggesting that our other clocks can work on their own. But in general, that clock is coordinating this whole symphony. So it's sort of the conductor of the symphony of clocks throughout the body. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

If we can go maybe one layer deeper, how does this actually work? I mean, because it seems wildly complex. You know, each cell has its own little mini clock. Right.

And then you've got this one thing sitting on top which says, okay, like I am the ultimate time setter for everything. But like my mind just goes, how? Like how does this all actually get coordinated inside? Right. I mean, the scientists are still unraveling all these mysteries. But we've got a pretty good picture. And it's only within the last two, three decades that we're really piecing this together. But those clocks, of course, is metaphorical. But it's really these genes that

you know, creating these proteins and these feedback loops that loop around 24, take about 24 hours a day to do their, their loop. And that circa in circadian actually references the fact, well, circa means about or around. So these clocks do not tick at precisely 24 hours a day. We all take differently and our bodies filled with these, these clocks that may, you know, not take exactly the same either. So,

this is why it is so critical for us to regularly calibrate those clocks to the 24-hour Earth Day by getting cues from nature. So primarily light and dark. That

That is why it's, well, one of the many reasons why we have thrown our rhythms out of whack in modern society by being indoors and such. But yeah, so we have the molecular details are still being fully elaborated on, but we have the basics. We know what main genes are involved here that create these feedback loops. And then we know in general that clock in the brain, which receives input from the eyes,

From a photoreceptor that we've only recently discovered. So we learned about rods and cones in school, right? But now we know there's this third photoreceptor that doesn't have anything to do with what you see or the picture created by your rods and cones, but actually just takes input from the wavelengths and the intensity of light and sends that to this master clock in the brain, which then...

that information to figure out the time of day and passes that memo along to the clocks throughout the body. And we're going to get into how light affects all these systems also a lot, but you mentioned genes, which makes me wonder...

Is sort of like the way that your clock is wound heritable? So like if my mom is a night owl or if my grandfather or grandma was somebody who really came alive at 3 a.m. and then would work until 6 a.m. and that was just completely natural for them. Is this something that maybe can get passed down through genetics, can be inherited? Yes, it can. Absolutely. This is a genetic...

predetermined biological feature that we are born with. However, it's somewhat malleable. So it's genes. I mean, you know, gene and environment are at play in a lot of aspects of our health, but the genes are there. So yeah, if you have mother, father, grandparent with a certain predilection to be up late or wake up early, you're more likely to have that. And then that can be influenced by your behavior and your exposures.

So, you know, you can kind of exacerbate your nine elements based on how you interact with light and dark. Are you aware of research that looks at sort of like how much is genetic versus how much is changeable? I'm thinking immediately of the research on happiness over time, where I think it's often commonly agreed now in the research that a certain amount, like there's a kind of like a happiness set point that most people have that we tend to revert to no matter what we do. And-

About 50, 40, 50% of that from the research I've seen is sort of like says there's a genetic element to this set point. It kind of like, this is where your genes say you revert to. But on the one hand, that's a little bit fatalistic. It's like, oh, it's my genes. But on the other hand, there's the other 50% that says there's a lot I can do in my life that actually can raise it. But it also means that maybe you need to keep doing it. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. I think, I mean, I don't know what the exact percentage is. I don't know that anybody does. Who I do know that there's, you know, there's ample research now talking about how if you, so chronotype refers to how your colorectal

clocks are ticking, kind of the period or how long they tick and how they orient themselves with the sun. So kind of you're sort of tethered to the sun. Is that, you know, are you oriented early or late compared to when the light's out? And that chronotype curve, so where you land on that, if you're at the early bird and night owl end, that's been kind of spread out in modern society. So your genetic predisposition, you know, might be within a

relatively narrow range, but the way we've disrupted our rhythms, we've really spread that out. So don't know the exact percentage, but there's definitely a large component that we are influencing with our behavior and kind of the way society is pressuring our lives, our day-to-day lives too. Right. On the one hand, if our genes can affect that kind of type of internal clock,

You also write that the clock also exerts a certain amount of control over, I think you said something like 50% of our genes? Yeah, it's getting at the idea of our physiology is very rhythmic. And I mean, this gets to why when we throw our circadian system out of whack, so many potential health repercussions can come. And scientists are linking more and more to circadian disruption. So yeah, metabolism, digestion are...

immune system, our ability to be alert, all these things are tied to our circadian clocks.

And I would imagine also, I mean, I've heard things like your body's certain elements of nutrition, so like blood glucose, insulin. We tend to think about that, well, okay, so there may be a genetic element if you're actually sort of heading towards type 1 diabetes, but there's a huge behavioral and lifestyle element to it. It's about, I have to really understand what goes into me.

But, you know, like it sounds like also when you think about, you know, how your body responds from a blood glucose, from an insulin level, from things like this, there may be like a clock element to this as well. Absolutely. So that gets into, you know, it's not only like what you put into your body, but when. So as far as food goes and medicine goes, your insulin levels, they're regulated to be primed to handle sugar at certain times a day. And-

That is not at night. Research shows that your insulin is ready more middle of the day. So that points to that's when we should be consuming the most carbohydrates, calories that the insulin can take care of. So absolutely, there's a rhythm to the day. I actually wore a glucose monitor myself as part of one of my experiments so I could kind of see how those responses actually work inside. And it's definitely depending on the time of day. If

Your organs, your body systems, your hormone levels, these various physiological adaptations to what is to be expected at different times of day in the body.

I did a similar experiment myself. I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor and I just ran a ton of experiments while I was running and, you know, eat the same food at different times of day. And it's fascinating to see how your body responds differently to it. And granted, it's kind of hard to rule out other, you know, confounding variables, your level of stress and this and that. But if you do it enough times, you start to see patterns. You're like, oh, okay.

This is really interesting. There's something happening inside of me that I wasn't like, maybe I've heard, you know, maybe people even told me about, but I'm like, sure, sure, sure. Right. And then you look at the numbers like, oh, this is actually real. I mean, I hadn't really thought about it that much, but then I started to notice, yeah, indeed, I feel the effects, right? I mean, I feel that more of that kind of post-meal slump, for example, at a certain time of day from the same meal. And you can see the kind of the corresponding numbers from the data. It's fascinating. Yeah.

One of the things you also sort of tied to the body clock, and you talk about the notion of us having certain windows under the umbrella of sort of power hours, right? And both in terms of cognitive performance and physical performance and how the body clock actually affects both of those. So take me into this a bit. Yeah, this is fascinating. Your body, again, you have all these systems peaking at different hours of the day. And so research shows that

your awareness is going to follow a circadian rhythm. There are certain hours of the day that your brain is just primed to work faster. And similarly for your muscles and the other elements that, you know, affect your speed and your strength and your endurance. And this depends on your personal body clocks. So again, that chronotype curve I was talking about, depending on where you fall on that, those hours of the day might be different. But on average, research shows that, for example, athletic performance, PPM,

peaks in the late afternoon or early evening for most people on average. And that's when, you know, world records are most likely to be broken and may give an edge to certain teams based on, you know, maybe their time zone if they've traveled across country for a game. So interesting implications there. And similarly for our productivity, you know, maybe our work performance. You know, I kind of did a little experiment

trying to pay attention on days when I didn't get up with an alarm clock, let myself just kind of go through my day and see when I felt more productive again, kind of over time. And I found my sweet spot is, you know, late morning is when I'm most on and most productive. So I started doing most of my writing, for example, during those hours. And then, you know, I would slump in the mid-afternoon, which is pretty common among a lot of us. We think about that post-lunch dip, which is not all

not only a consequence of that meal settling in, that's part of it, but it's also our circadian rhythm. So maybe there's certain times of day that, yeah, you do a lot to less rigorous activities or, you know, like emailing or doing the dishes, for example.

Yeah. It's so interesting also the way you say like there are sort of like common window, like most people fall under this. And I found that I'm a little bit of an outlier to those windows because for years, you know, as a writer, people are like, okay, so here's what you have to do. Like all quote real writers, serious writers, like you get up first thing in the morning before anyone is up, you know, five, six, 7am. And then you bang out your two or three hours. Like that is the most productive time. That's where everything is magical. Yeah.

And on and off for years, I would try and do that. And eventually I'm just like, no, like this actually doesn't work for me.

And then that slump, you know, when most people are like, yeah, three to five, I'm worthless. You know, where in theory, like that is where most people cognitively, you're kind of not at your peak. I am. Wow. Yeah. I'll write from two to five or two to six in the afternoon. And I'm just, I can drop into a zone and have really good work come out of me. But if I try and write sort of like early in the morning, it's just like, I'm

I'm banging my head against the wall. It's just not really working. And I think it speaks to what you were saying also, like the importance of start with the generalities, but you've really got to run your own experiments. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's hard to do our own experiments for a lot of people, right? Because society, families, schedules really regiment when you do what it is.

And it's hard to know what your body really wants to do. When we wake up with an alarm clock and we, you know, got to get the kids to school, crazy early hours, all these things kind of get in the way of really understanding where we fall. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's different for all.

And this is something that's research I've seen before. And it's something that you write about also. It's this notion of even sort of like understanding, I'm fortunate. I control my day to a large extent, but a lot of folks like work in organizations where they don't, you know, like there's a nine to five or an eight to six or whatever it

Whatever it is these days. And if you're somebody where you kind of don't click on, like, you know, at full steam until a little bit later, but the workday for you starts at 8 a.m. Or if you're a student and a lot of students are getting to class and like, it's like seven something in the morning now and your brains don't work that way. That can be a brutal experience. Absolutely. Yeah. The student, that middle and high school students that sometimes,

still widely, like you said, are forced to get to school before 7.30 or 8. I mean, at that point in your life as an adolescent, your circadian rhythms are actually drifting later, like two, three hours. So even if you're maybe genes are programmed to be somewhat night owl-ish, you know, it's probably still way too early. So very, very few of those students in class are at all

ready to be learning or having gotten enough rest. And yeah, for the rest of us, you know, older in the working world, absolutely. I feel like it's, well, the science suggests, not just how I feel, that we are both the employee and the

employer are losing out. So your employer is losing out on those productive hours that they could be getting from their employee, both because maybe they're sleep deprived, but also they're not working at their prime hours, or maybe during their prime hours, they're forced to be in a meeting. So there are workplaces and most of the ones that I discovered writing my book are in Europe that have adopted more of a circadian rhythm, I guess, respect for

for the employers and their chronotypes and trying to take that into account to maximize

productivity for everyone. Yeah. Do you have a sense for, you know, the last four years have seen, first it was a really big pendulum swing to remote work and now it's kind of swinging back to return to office and then people are kind of finding their middle ground depending on who you are and where you're working. But are you seeing that, like sort of like whether you're working in an office under fixed hours or working at home kind of like affecting, being affected by this as well? Well, I know that, I mean, COVID seems to have

opened up more possibility, right? It helped a lot of employers see that, I mean, maybe this isn't across the board, but a lot saw that they could still get good productivity from their workers and perhaps even more and perhaps less, you know, fewer sick days because employees finally had a chance to really feel out their rhythms and kind of go with what their body actually wanted to do. And I think, yeah, we are seeing a bit more of that shift back to the office, but I think on the other

seems to be more awareness for that. And I don't know, I mean, this is like, as part of why I get this message out. I mean, we have sort of a sweet spot here, a nice window of opportunity to try to take advantage of that societal trend and hopefully doesn't swing completely back. Or maybe, you know, there's everybody goes to the office, but it's go, you know, during the window, that's for you. I mean, that's another thing that some workplaces have taken into account is just

Yeah, some people swing into the office at 11 a.m., some are coming in at 6 a.m., have those important meetings in the middle of the day when people overlap.

Oh, that's really interesting. I hadn't really heard that, but it would actually make sense to say, hey, listen, we're going to have a return to office. Maybe there's a mandate. You've got to be here three days a week. But if you do your best work or your life schedule makes it so that you function where you're here at 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. or something like that, and somebody else gets there at 10.30 and works until 6 p.m.,

Seven, that's okay. That's really interesting. Like if we start to see that happen, sort of like in letting people accommodate both their lifestyles, but also their internal clocks and their ability to really be most engaged and have their brains working optimally. Exactly. And the results is, again, this is a relatively small sample size so far, but they're finding workplace satisfaction jumped much higher, productivity. I mean, everybody seems pretty happy with this scheduling and flexibility. Yeah. Yeah.

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Really figuring out your body clock and aligning your work from a physical or a cognitive performance level is important. What about mental health? What's the relationship between the circadian rhythms, the body clock, and mental health? Yeah, there's a lot of interesting connections and more being made all the time. Obviously, the first that comes to mind that we've probably heard about is seasonal affective disorder. That's real. And

certain populations more prone to it. There definitely seems to be, you know, a strong correlation with further latitudes or higher latitudes that shift day length throughout the year, affecting the circadian rhythm. And ultimately, you know, one consequence of that is a greater risk of having that seasonal affective disorder, which points to some, you know, important treatments or treatment options trying to get that, replace that light in the morning, for example. There's also a

fascinating research linking like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and some of these things with circadian disruption and kind of this two-way street where, for example, if somebody's struggling with one of these mental health disorders and they may be more likely to stay indoors and stay up late with light, miss the morning sun, which is so crucial to

to recalibrate our clocks. And then that kind of causes this vicious spiral, right? So it exacerbates their symptoms and kind of gets stuck in this pattern. So there's researchers looking into that. And again, also linking some of the treatments for these conditions, thinking about how those are actually affecting our circadian rhythm and how that might be the up

part of at least the pathway of how they work and why they don't work for everyone, because it depends on your own personal circadian rhythm for how that medication interacts and also perhaps the time of day you take that medication. So it's making things more complicated in some ways, but also pointing to some interesting potential solutions.

Yeah. I mean, even sort of like if you ran experiments and saying, okay, so let me try, you know, if you've been prescribed something, medication or intervention, like what happens if I do this at 9 a.m.? What happens if I do it at noon? What happens if I do it at 4 or before I go to bed? And seeing is like, is there a noticeable difference? Are you aware of any studies that are actually tracking that? Yeah, I talked to several researchers. I have a chapter that gets into circadian medicine. And, you know, one that stood out to me was the first one

U.S.-based clinical trial circadian chronotherapy, that's what we kind of call the timing of treatment to getting rhythms, for glioblastoma. So there's a drug that kind of the standard treatment

which was FDA approved for because it extended life on average about two and a half months. Well, their researchers are finding based on a retrospective trial that was done that this drug taken in the morning versus later in the day had a different effect on survival of three and a half months. So if you take it like earlier in the day, it's going to

perhaps prolong your life on average of three and a half months compared to if you took it later in the day. That's more than the FDA granted approval for the drug. So it was a pretty significant effect. And again, that was retrospective. So they're doing a prospective clinical trial right now to really kind of get in on what's, if that's really happening. But this is

We're finding similar things over and over with blood pressure drugs, migraine treatments, arthritis treatments. At the time of day, could have a profound effect on the effectiveness and the side effects of many medications and treatments. Surgeries, even the time of day you have that surgery, could have an impact on the outcomes. Fascinating. Wow.

Which makes it that much more important that we understand what our own personal body clock is telling us, what our circadian rhythm is. And other than trying to figure out when am I thinking best, when am I sort of like feel most athletically alive? Is there any sort of standardized, like this kind of works for every one way for somebody to figure out what their circadian rhythm is? We're getting closer to that. As part of Fiery's research for the book, I...

took part in a few different tests of my own circadian rhythms. And one was spitting into test tubes and

like hourly for many hours through the night. So fun, so fun. And then, yeah, a very brave, kind scientist, you know, took that and it took forever to analyze it, looking for melatonin levels. So at the onset of when your melatonin should naturally rise, which is a couple hours before bedtime, you can see actually when it starts to rise and how fast. So that is one kind of gold standard that we've used for a long time. But again, yeah,

It's not fun. It's intensive, time-consuming, you know, ultimately expensive because of all this. But scientists are coming up with some pretty interesting, more, less invasive, faster means of coming up with what, reading your clocks. And there's now, they're thinking about

rapid blood tests. And I also pluck hairs from my head and I'm looking at hair roots to determine where my clocks are at as well. So that's one angle researchers are going with. There's like kind of taking just a sample of your skin and

getting some of the metabolites, you know, that come off your skin that are looking into that. So there's research that's getting us closer to potentially one day, let's say you arrive at a hospital, doctor could do a quick test to determine where your circadian rhythms are at, and then use that information to more optimally personalize that medicine based on time. Yeah, I mean, that's wild, especially, you know, because as you described, you look at the typical prescription label, and it's like, well, like, like, take this once a day, right?

But like if the efficacy changes dramatically based on the time that you take it, it can be huge. Yeah. And especially if it's a short acting drug, right? Because some of these are long acting drugs. So, I mean, there's nuances here. But yeah, absolutely. For a great portion of drugs, the most common drugs that we have in use today, scientists have found that there appears to be a time of day effect. So a lot of potential here. One other curiosity. And then I kind of want to drop into like what breaks the cycle here. But-

Yeah, 100%.

On average, we're all, our rhythms are changing. So all our rhythms are different. And then even for ourselves, like it's going to be different when we're a kid versus older. So when we're younger, usually we lean a little early on average. I mean, I think every parent probably knows that. Kid is up pretty early before they want to be up. And then it's like, yeah, adolescent age, drift later. And then some point in your twenties, shifting back. And

And then as we get older, might shift early again. And the bigger thing that happens when we're older is we also, we lose a lot of that robustness of our rhythm, kind of dampens, which some really great research looking into what can we do about that to help as we get older, keep that robustness of our rhythms and the implications there for our long-term health and longevity.

Which is really interesting. So, yeah, they're shifting throughout our lives. So, again, that's, you know, kind of our genes at work, at play, as well as our environment, because also there's a certain period of time in our life where we're, again, more regimented with our schedule. And then retirement hits. Maybe we're able to finally live by our rhythms again.

Yeah. You mentioned that one of the ways that you can start to test this is measuring melatonin levels. So I have heard that as we age, that once we start hitting our 30s, like slowly that melatonin, which helps us fall asleep and stay asleep,

That the body structure produced less and less and less to the time when you're in your 60s, 70s and 80s. There's a really substantial drop in that. So I guess my curiosity is, which I think leads to a lot of struggles for a lot of people or shortened sleep or less deep sleep or fitful sleep.

Is there a sense for whether is the circadian rhythm affecting melatonin production in a way that makes it produce less? Or is our body naturally producing less melatonin that then affects circadian rhythm? Or is it kind of impossible to tell? Is it like a chicken and egg thing? That's a really good question. I actually don't have an answer for that one. Yeah, it might be a bit of a chicken or egg. I think, you know, a lot of our body systems and hormones

hormone levels or just get weaker over time. And in addition to the melatonin dropping, potentially, we're also, as we get older, we get cataracts. And they actually filter out a lot of the blue light intensity that we need to cue our clocks to day

So there's a lot of things kind of going against us as we get older, which is why it is all the more important to do everything we can to support our rhythms by, as Hans, I mean, we'll get into this momentarily, but getting those important cues to really try to keep our clocks in alignment. I mean, that's one thing that could potentially sort of like dysregulate your, these, the body clock, these circadian rhythms. Let's,

Let's talk about some of the other ways that this happens, because there's a whole section in your book where you talk about how this whole thing falls apart. Because for many of us, if not most of us, there are so many influences, so many things that kind of break the body clock. And we've talked about how important it is to actually really understand it and work with it. So take me into this a little bit. You've mentioned a number of times the notion of

external light. So how does this work for us, but also against us in different ways? Yeah. So our clocks are craving that intense light, particularly of the blue wavelength part of the spectrum during the day.

That's how we evolved, right? Outside, getting that daylight. Unfortunately, indoors, where we spend 90 plus percent of our time, we've got these artificial lights, which to our visual system are fine. Like we can see it seems bright, but our circadian system is separate. I mean, it works a little bit with our visual system, but our third photoreceptor that we have that we've recently discovered

That's not a radar cone. It is taking that information, you know, and sending it straight to our master clock. It's not having anything to do with our visual system, but it requires brighter light and particularly of the blue wavelengths to

to register that information to the brain. And it's our indoor lighting environment is rarely giving that to us. Fortunately, there's technology that's getting better and better that is getting us closer to mimicking daylight to do that work. But unless we're right by a window during the day, which I mean, I'm very fortunate, like I do have my big window right next to my desk, but probably

Probably majority of people don't have that privilege. It may be, I mean, this is also becomes an equity issue. There's a lot of people that, you know, work in basements or back of house spaces or the night shift, and they're not getting that access to light during the day. You know, there's things that we can all individually do, like make sure we try to get outside for 15, 20 minutes first thing in the morning, because that morning light is particularly powerful and helpful to recalibrate our clocks. But light throughout the day is

also beneficial. And the more we get of that, the more protected we are from light at night as well, which is when we don't want light, right? At night, we want to cut our lighting indoors. We want to, especially the blue wavelengths, dim everything, make it warm so our body gets the message that it is night. We're getting close to bedtime.

Yeah. And I'm thinking also, you know, I'm in Colorado, so we're heading into fall and it feels like probably pretty soon into winter. The days get a lot shorter, you know, we lose hours from the day and it gets cold outside. So you just, you know, natural, actually, people will hike here in the most insane weather. Good for them. Yeah.

I have learned this about this amazing town and I've become one of them. But, you know, for a lot of folks, like as soon as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, you're just, you know, whether it's part of your job or not, you're just not outside anymore. You're just, you go from indoor to indoor to indoor. And I would imagine that that seasonality, like living in a place where winter is cold and short, that has an effect on this too. Yeah. It's sad irony, but

Winter time, those short days is when it's all the more important to get outside because your window of opportunity for daylight is shrinking. And I mean, here in Seattle, we're even, yeah, the days even get shorter, higher latitude, and we have more cloud cover than you. So, but even when it's cloudy out, it is...

Despite how it might appear to our visual system from indoors, it's, you know, you're getting way more good information to the master clock outdoors than you do indoors. So, yeah, I mean, I guess one of the big lessons I learned from reporting this book is, yeah, bundle up. Do everything you need to get outside and get those photons during the day, particularly in the winter. And if you need to, like when the days are really short, you can artificially extend the day with really powerful algorithms.

artificial light, like a sad lamp. Talk to scientists that, yeah, kind of recreated their day, even if the sun hasn't risen yet, make it rise to those third photoreceptors in the eye. Yeah. So that's where you see like these full spectrum lights that give you that blue light there. So you can get that first thing in the morning. Exactly. I'm curious also, you described this third receptor in the eye as the key thing that like you get light into that and that helps like really sync up with your circadian rhythms and keep them in sync with

Are you aware of whether we have any kind of photoreceptors in our skin that do a similar thing? Another fascinating line of research is investigating that right now. We're finding these various photoreceptors potentially all over the body, at least these photopigments. So yes, there is some evidence at this point that

The scana has these photoreceptors, and in fact, they might ignore messages from the master clock if they're able to, you know, get the message directly from the sun, right? Which makes sense evolutionarily because that's the first line of defense, right, for protecting yourself from ultraviolet radiation. So if it knows that it's, uh-oh, sun is potentially doing damage, you know, like that's where if they can set the clock right and get their defenses up quickly, there's a benefit to that. So this is an evolving area of research. Yeah.

Now things could change in the next year or two, but there's more evidence that there's more going on than we thought. Yeah, I mean, that'd be fascinating. And it would make sense, right? Because we know that we have photoreceptors in our skin that help our bodies produce vitamin D.

Yeah.

That would be really interesting to see if we also have photoreceptors in our skin that come their own mini master clocks and sort of like help us with the circadian rhythm. Absolutely, yeah. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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So you mentioned also this notion of nighttime light. So we're talking about, okay, so we want to get outside or we've got to in some way get blue light into us early in the day, midday, and that helps us stay on track with our body clocks.

What about nighttime? Because this is where I hear all sorts of things about, you know, like I see biohackers wearing their blue blockers and their amber lenses. And, you know, I have like an app that, you know, takes the blue light out of my screen on my computer. And sometimes I'm just like, does this really matter? There are a lot of tools out there. I think they all have a place and they all can help. I think from what I've gathered from the scientists, the most important thing is to just

turn off the lights or dim them. I mean, I was amazed at how little light I really needed to see and see pretty well. I mean, our eyes adapt to darker places.

environments. So yes, I mean, you can wear blue light blocking glasses. I do sometimes, especially if I like do have to work late and I'm in front of a screen, I will dim the screen. I'll take advantage of the blue light filter technology too. I did some tests with a spectrometer to kind of tell how much light I was really getting, especially that would affect the circadian rhythm and, you know, to be on the safe side, might as well throw it all on. But is it necessary all the time?

Probably not. I mean, if you can dim things enough and if you can just work with, you know, table lamps, especially if you have a warmer colored bulb. I also have, I've just spread a bunch of electric candles around my apartment that I can like turn on with a remote. You know, it gives a really warm, like cozy glow. And again, enough light for me to see what I'm doing. If I have to read, maybe I'll use like a reading light. But other than that, it's, you know, it's plenty for what I need in the evening. And it

I don't know, that helps me wind down. I do feel more prepared to go to bed and go to sleep.

And the last few hours of the day like that. So is the risk that if we keep the lights bright and there's blue light, that's a part of that either from our overhead lights or from screens. And so many of us are on screens like literally way too late in the evening that basically unsinks like the master clock that it kind of disrupts those rhythms and all the bodily functions, all the health related functions, the cognitive functions that

that they get out of whack because now we're effectively disrupting the master clock, which controls all these different functions and who knows what the ripple effect that'll be. It's basically right. I mean, it's telling the master clock that it's still daytime. So it's delaying that onset of the melatonin rise that we need to really trigger that cascade of other effects that happens to help us go to sleep.

And it also has a directly energizing effect. So light has many ways in which it affects our physiology. So it's the circadian system as well as this energizing effect of the light. And again, it's important to note that light doesn't even need to have blue in it. Blue is most powerful, and that's what our third photoreceptor really keys in on. But any light bright enough can have the same effect. You just need more photons of those other wavelengths to have that impact on us. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. What about stimulants? And I'm thinking in particular of the single biggest stimulant in the world, caffeine. Uh-huh.

It sticks around in the body a really long time. I have certainly adopted trying to be disciplined about keeping my coffee to, you know, in the morning hours and trying not to have too much. I still have like two cups in the morning, which is probably more than I should. You know, there's a balance to life. But yeah, the later you take it in, you know, the longer it'll be in your system and it can derail sleep for sure. It's going to make it harder to fall asleep and end

and affect your ability to get deep sleep through the night. Is that simply because there's a stimulating effect or is a stimulant actually doing something to disrupt the circadian rhythm, the body clock in some meaningful way? It's a combination of things. It's effect on what's called the sleep homeostat. You've got this other system that's affecting your sleep, right? It's the circadian systems working with this sleep homeostat, which is based on you, like you build up this thing called adenosine in your body throughout the course of the day, which builds kind of your sleepiness.

And caffeine attaches to the same receptors as that adenosine. And so it kind of masks your sleepiness. This way it has this kind of stimulating effect during the day. But it's sort of messing with that other system as well, if you have that in your system.

too long. And then the other research showing that it can also wreak its own havoc on circadian clocks as well. Right. So that's the most common, I want to call it over-the-counter stimulant. Yes. Right. Fair to say. Um,

But there are also pharmaceutical things. And increasingly, you know, it's fascinating to me. I've been kind of curious about, you know, there's been a mass increase in diagnosis of adults in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s with ADD, ADHD. And one of the things that is often prescribed for this is some form of stimulant, whether it's Adderall or something else. There's a wide range of different things and it affects people very differently. Can those types of pharma-based products also affect circadian rhythm?

You know, I don't have a clear answer on that one. That is a really good question. My hunch is probably, but I can't be specific with any specific drugs. But if it's acting as a stimulant, I mean, there's, yeah, there's a good chance it's interacting with these systems, our physiology. It just all somehow speaks to it. All comes together. Yeah. One of the things you also list under the category of clock scramblers is pollutants, like air pollutants. I thought this was fascinating. Talk to me more about this. I

I thought it was fascinating too. My journalism career has been mostly focused on environmental health and a lot of pollution, toxic chemical exposures. And so I've learned about how those things affect our physiology profoundly and, you know, a lot of these consequences. And then delving into the circadian research literature, there's some evidence that a lot of those, the pathway of how that pollutant causes that health effect could be through the circadian system. I

I mean, not unlikely to be the one answer. But yeah, these like air pollution, there's an increasing number of studies now showing how that is potentially scrambling clocks. And again, this makes sense when we think about how much those clocks control. If they do throw systems out of whack, now that sets things up to go wrong. So yeah, between BPA, you know, pesticides, air pollution,

heavy metals. Yeah, it's a laundry list of pollutants in our everyday environment that now evidence suggests it could be

Break in our clocks as well. Yeah, it's sort of like, where do you go and what do you do? I know, I know.

And when you think about it, okay, so like wildfires, which are becoming increasingly prevalent all over the country and the world, and then drifting all over, I would imagine that there are pollutants in the air, which is going to affect your lungs and your eyes and things like that. But I'm wondering if one of the effects of that also is it blocks out a certain amount of light.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I discussed this in the book. It actually disproportionately blocks out blue light, believe it or not. So yeah, it's kind of has a double whammy there, right? You're getting the pollutants that could be affecting all kinds of things, including your circadian system. Plus your third photoreceptors are not getting as much of that important information about the time of day from the light.

Yeah. And the other pollution, which is light pollution, we kind of talked a little bit about like, you know, blue light and its importance in some, you know, when we're emitting blue light in internal environments, but external environments too. Yes. External. I mean, our light pollution just continues to grow globally and it's affecting, I mean, it's not only us, of course, it's wildlife and plants and insects linking a lot of declines in these populations to light pollution. Yeah.

And we are not immune either. And there are certain populations more prone to the effects of light pollution than others. And again, it becomes an equity issue because a lot of those same people who during the day are not getting a lot of daylight are also getting a disproportionate amount of light at night, whether that's

If they're on a basement apartment or first floor apartment getting more street light or in a housing complex with police erected floodlights, which I witnessed a few of those in social housing complexes. So yeah, we don't have to worry about the indoor light environment, which we might have a bit more control over, but the light pollution and that light trespass into our windows if we, you know, don't have adequate blackout blinds, for example, or if we're out in

Right.

We spent a lot of time talking about basically how almost from the moment that you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes, there are things all around you that basically break the rhythms and potentially cause harm. Let's turn the page and talk about what we can actually do about this because this is not a like, oh, just suck it up. And you're like, the modern society is destroying your circadian rhythms and there's nothing you can do about it. There are things. Yes. We can be proactive on a micro scale and macro scale to really make a difference here. So take me into some of the

the strategies and the tools that we want to think about here to reconnect with our circadian rhythms. Yeah, I get excited about this because there is so much potential we can do. This is a subtle thing going on that a lot of us are not really aware of. But once we know it, we can implement some simple tools. So on the first level, like you said, the micro, the individual level, we can all do our best

to increase that contrast during the day. And we can try to get outside for those 15, 20 minutes in the morning, even if it's cold out, or use a light that mimics sunlight as best we can.

And then getting light during the day as much as possible, being close to a window as much as possible, cutting the lights at night. And then we can also constrict the hours in which we eat because we know that that is another important cue for our clocks. In particular, you know, the two, three hours before bed, not taking in any calories. And we know that that can really help our clocks and just help our health overall, our metabolism. And then we can

Be consistent. And this is a tough one. But if we can go to bed and get up at the same hours every day of the week, all seven days of the week, there's a lot of research showing that that is so much better for us. It's better for circadian clocks. And now there's real recent research linking that to chronic health conditions down the line as we get older. Like being consistent is perhaps more important than how much we sleep in some ways.

So those are things. I mean, that last one, again, that kind of depends on society's schedules for us, right? And again, school start times. Or your own family. I mean, if you've got like, you know, a three-month-old baby at home, you're just kind of busted for a month. There's going to be a couple of months where like all this goes out the window. It's just not going to work. You can try, but you know, reality is reality for just some like windows or seasons of life. Exactly. Yeah.

And then in those times, maybe we try to do the other things, you know, as best you can. Just, yeah, all these things are in balance and you got to consider the practical reality of our world. And that, you know, that goes into, again, stepping back, what can we do macro as a society to help support everyone's rhythms? And that gets us into things like delaying school start times, which is...

It's becoming a trend. There are more and more school districts around the country and globally that are considering this, delaying in Seattle where I'm at, the Seattle Public Schools, delayed school start times to about 8.45 from previously being 7.30 for middle high schools. So that's, and studies show that that's really helped the students. They're getting more sleep. They're doing better academically. Similarly, work start times, you know, getting a little more flexibility in the hours that employees are required to be on the job.

We can think about daylight saving time. Science suggests we should be on standard time year round for our clocks because we want morning light and daylight saving time steals an hour of morning light, puts it at the end of the day, which is when we want it dark. So this is hard for me to grasp at first because I am a fan of having daylight.

light later. But if we think about it, it's the winter that we really need to be worried about. And those mornings can be really dark for a really long time if we were on permanent daylight saving time, which is what a lot of people are pushing for. And we can think about our time zones and some of the time zones that have been drawn around the world. Our maps are biologically illogical. They don't align with the sun. We can be thinking about that like China is essentially a

all one time zone, and it should be five if you look at the map and how we draw the lines. So things like that. I mean, some of these are harder to achieve politically, whatnot. Some of these might be easier, at least at a local level, and moving beyond that. But I think if we can really respect and understand the potential implications here and how much maybe healthcare costs we could save,

productivity and future for our students. Those things we could really map out why some of this stuff might be beneficial for society as a whole. Yeah.

And I mean, again, that works on a micro and a macro level, right? If just on an individual level, if you're like, I'd love to think more clearly, I'd love to get more of the good stuff done. I'd love to be more creative. I'd love to just show up and maybe that just helps me feel better. But maybe it also helps me in my career path. Maybe it helps me in these different ways. Maybe it helps me show up as a...

a better friend, a better son, a better parent, a better, like whoever it may be, because I can just be more there, that there are these little things that we can do and that this master clock really does make a difference. Like the circadian rhythm makes a difference and it makes sense time to try and like figure out like, what are the hot zones, the power zones and like the down zones in my own. And you just shared some really simple things.

that we can do on an individual level. And again, maybe not like for a given moment in your life, but you know, like there, there are almost always probably things that you can cherry pick and say, okay, so yes to this, even things like, and you didn't mention this, but I'm curious, like having blackout shades, right?

Yeah.

Imagine the impact on society, on healthcare costs, on culture, on creativity.

It's kind of stunning. Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. Profound implications potentially. Yeah. We have a crisis of, you know, healthcare in this country, for example, and these costs. And I think this is one thing among many that has been overlooked that I think if we can really try to quantify a bit more of, of the actual impacts, maybe, maybe that message will, we'll get through. I just want to throw one thing out there. This just came to mind because we're talking about blackout curtains again at night. If you think about like, if you get up and go to the bathroom,

Bathroom light, just that exposure to an overhead bathroom light could wreak havoc on your sleep and your circadian rhythm. So other little tools like get a lower hanging nightlight or I used to carry an electric candle into the bathroom. I'm over that now I have a nightlight, so it's a little silly. But these little things maybe you don't think about that could potentially go a long way.

It's funny, I was recently in a bathroom like in the middle of the night and the nightlight was really bright. And I was like almost trying to shield myself from the nightlight. I'm like, is there like a lower switch or dimmer switch on the nightlight or something? But get something that's not designed to like make it a blade, but just like give a little bit of light. Yeah, I did it.

I mean, it wasn't expensive, but I invested in a dimmable, warm-colored little nightlight that I have plugged in my bathroom. Yeah, no, I love that. And we have in our bedroom now, we got these bulbs where they're connected to an app, and you can adjust sort of like the wavelength and the intensity of the bulb based on, you know, like...

First thing in the morning, you can have it bright and a lot of blue. And in the evening, you can have more of like an amber and a subtler light. It's amazing how much the technology, I think, is adapting to all of these things and becoming really accessible and available to a lot of people. You don't have to be in a laboratory environment to have access to this stuff these days. Yeah, yeah, it's exciting. I mean, it is also kind of the Wild West where some of these products we don't really know exactly what they're doing. Right, it's like what's true and what's not. It's like a lot of claims out there too. When you think about the future...

When we talked a little bit about some of the research that you're seeing being done, is there any particular thing in this domain that's sort of like, we're not there yet, but people are exploring it that really interests or excites you? Oh my gosh, so many things. Towards the end of the book, I last couple of chapters, I really get into more of this.

But I'll pull out one. I mean, the first thing that popped in my head is DARPA right now. So the government agency is working with scientists on a digestible, implantable device that

could essentially read some of our rhythms. So it's, you know, hormones fluctuate throughout the day, all these things, taking off that data, kind of read our rhythms and then pump out whether it's drug that we need or whatever, based on that immediate feedback. As more we understand this and as technology evolves as well in parallel, putting these things together to read and write our rhythms and then

optimize medications and these other things. I think there's phenomenal levels of potential here. And, you know, like timing chemotherapy and things like that with technology can be

become all the more feasible because there's of course some barriers like at the hospital with like you know there's only so many chairs at certain times a day for these things so like trying to implement the science in the clinical world could be a challenge but I think the technology is really helping us or should you know in the near future help us overcome some of those obstacles and make this a reality.

Yeah. I mean, so interesting and so exciting. It'd be really cool to revisit this conversation in five years and see sort of like what's going on. And then I'm sure when you fold AI into the equation too, there's probably going to be all sorts of just fascinating accelerations in all of this work. Absolutely. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this conversation, Good Life Project, if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. I would say, I mean, I'm biased thinking about this right now, but-

try to reclaim your lost connection with nature. I mean, nature gave us this 24 hour day and the light in the dark. So trying to re-infuse those kind of lost cues back into our lives has profound potential to improve your health and your happiness and your productivity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, save it. You'll also love the conversation we had with Charlie Gilkey about syncing up with natural rhythms to get more of the right things done. You'll find a link to Charlie's episode in the show notes. This is Charlie Gilkey.

This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter, Crafted Era Theme Music, and special thanks to Shelley Dell for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening outfit.

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