Circadian Rhythms and Light 6 Weeks to a Hapier Healthier You

Foreign welcome to today's presentation of Integrated Behavioral Health. I AM your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. And today we are talking about light and circadian rhythms. We've talked in the past about sleep and we've talked in the past a little bit about light. Last week we talked about environments and ways to improve light. But we one of the reasons that sleep and light are important and one of the things that affects sleep are our circadian rhythms. And a lot of people think of circadian rhythms as just what controls when we're sleepy. And it is so much more than that. Our circadian rhythms, they found, actually impact just about every system and every process in the body. So when our circadian rhythms are wonky, it creates a whole bunch of problems. It can. Well, let's just go through what some of the things that the circadian rhythms do and then you can see how having disrupted circadian rhythms can be a problem. When your circadian rhythms are in alignment, the digestive system produces proteins to match the timing of your typical meals. When you are not maintaining your circadian rhythms, when you're going to sleep, sleep some nights at 7am and some nights at 9pm Your body doesn't know when it's supposed to secrete those hunger and satiation hormones. So that can create a problem. People who have erratic circadian rhythms tend to have more difficulty with weight management and do tend to be more obese than people who have stable circadian rhythms. The endocrine system also is tied to your circadian rhythms and it regulates cortisol to suit your normal energy expenditure. So again, your body starts to expect, like for me, I get up about three in the morning and so my body knows that that's when my cortisol is supposed to surge and be at its highest. And then I go to sleep about 8 o' clock at night. So that's when my cortisol levels should be at about their lowest. And that happens because I have a consistent schedule that helps me set my circadian rhythms. Cortisol gets a bad rap as our stress hormone, but it is also our energy hormone. And when we need cortisol to have a little bit of get up and go. Metabolism and weight are impacted by circadian rhythms because our circadian rhythms have actually do regulate our blood sugar and our cholesterol levels. Now let's talk about blood sugar first. When your circadian rhythms are all over the place, your blood sugar is not being regulated as well. So people who have insulin resistance and people who have pre diabetes or diabetes are going to find it more difficult to regulate their blood sugar during these periods. Additionally, when our circadian rhythms, as we talked about with the digestive system, when our circadian rhythms are not in alignment, we tend to be hungrier more often because our body doesn't know when we're supposed to sleep, when we're supposed to eat. So people tend to do more grazing, which also contributes to difficulty with regulating blood sugar because the body's almost regularly being bombarded with blood with glucose. The other thing with metabolism, and this also goes along with gonadal hormones, which we'll get to in a minute. But our gonadal hormones are actually made from cholesterol. Our testosterone is made from cholesterol. So if we don't have adequate regulation of that, then our body is going to have more difficulty having the raw materials to make our gonadal hormones. Think of it like your, the ups man. You know, you count on a delivery every month or every three months or whatever, and our circadian rhythms are kind of like that daily UPS man, that is making sure that it delivers the cholesterol and regulates it in a fashion that we need. Our circadian rhythms also impact our reproductive system and influence the release of gonadal hormones. So when your circadian rhythms are out of whack many times it's going to impact your libido and it may also impact your ability to conceive if you're a, if you're a female, because your hormones are going to be even more all over the place. So this can also underscore the importance of maintaining your circadian rhythms even when your hormones are, you know, a little bit all over the place. Depending on where you are in your monthly cycle. It, it's still important to make sure that we maintain our circadian rhythms. The immune system is also impacted by circadian rhythms as well as processes of DNA repair that are involved in preventing cancer. We need that good quality sleep when we're in that deep sleep is when our body does all of its preventative maintenance. It goes through and clears out the adenosine and it clears out some of the free radicals and does that. Now it does some of this during the day, but when we're resting, our body is able to focus. It's kind of like the nighttime janitorial staff coming in and clearing out all the sludge of the day. But if we're not getting that good quality sleep, that's not going to happen. And we won't get good quality sleep if our circadian rhythms are not in, in Sync circadian rhythms also, and this is the one we, you know, typically think of, help our body know when to secrete melatonin so we can get sleepy and start getting to sleep, so we can get that rest and restorative sleep. And we've talked in other videos about how in order to relieve our sleep pressure, in order to wake up and feel alert and refreshed, it is important that we have a certain amount of deep sleep every night because that's when the body, when the brain is able to clear out the adenosine and engage in neuronal repair. They've found in multiple studies that people who don't have good circadian rhythm regulation are at much higher risk of Alzheimer's and dementia because that neuronal repair doesn't take place in their younger years. And it becomes additive, kind of like a factory that, that you don't regularly engage in preventative maintenance. You know, five, ten years of abuse and things are really going to start to break down. So how do we fix this? Well, our circadian rhythms are regulated by the SU superchiasmatic nucleus, or the scn, which is in the hypothalamus. Now, where have we heard that word before? Hypothalamus, hypothalamic pituitary, adrenal axis, hypothalamic pituitary, gonadal axis, axis. If our hypothalamus is not healthy, we are going to have a whole world of problems. So we really want to work to keep our brain healthy. We want to work to help regulate that HPA axis because remember, when that becomes dysregulated, we start having neuronal death, which can also impact our circadian rhythms. It can impact the health of the hypothalamus in any event. Back to circadian rhythms. How do we start regulating these buggers? Light is going to be really important. And in terms of circadian rhythms, light can come from artificial sources. When we're talking about getting vitamin D, that is a whole different animal and that is can only be acquired through the sun or special bulbs that produce UVB lights, which we have talked about, not necessarily recommended for humans, although they do have those bulbs for terrariums if you happen to raise reptiles or something. But in terms of circadian rhythms, we want to have blue light in moderation during the day. Now, blue light helps improve memory, improve energy. Blue light signals the SCN that it is time to be awake. Now, I have this little handy dandy chart over here because a lot of people have difficulty kind of thinking about you know, what is blue light versus other light? And our blue light tends to have a, a lot of energy in it, which for some reason prompts us to have more energy. Your blue lights are going to be that cool temperature which can look kind of obnoxious in pictures. A lot of people don't like strong blue light for selfies, but blue light can help you be awake. Our digital devices, our TVs, especially LCD TVs and our computer screens and those sorts of things emit a lot of blue light. Now too much can be hard on our eyes, it can be hard on our retinas. So as with anything, moderation is the key. But we do need a little bit of blue light during the day to help us have energy and improve our memory and our cognitive functioning. You can get that through daylight bulbs. I suggest, I think we talked about this last week using LED bulbs. Blue light with a temperature of 5,000 Kelvin or above, and get it as bright as possible. You're really trying to mimic sunlight and you know how bright sunlight is. The closer a light bulb is to you, the more, the less the, the light diffuses, the more intensely you're going to get that light. So instead of having can lights in the ceiling, if you can have a couple of desk lights or one of those lamps that sits by your, sits by your chair and kind of goes over your head, those can be really helpful for adding to your light at your desk. You know, even if you have to have bulbs overhead, you know, in your office, you can also add a, a small desk lamp that has a daylight bulb, you know, and, and the bulbs that have the 5,500 Kelvin temperature are typically going to be called daylight bulbs. And you can have one of those on your desk. That is one of the easiest ways to help start setting your circadian rhythms. If you work in a dark area like a neonatal intensive care unit, you may, I'm not saying that you necessarily can, but if you have your desk over in a corner where it's not going to disrupt the patients, you may be able to add a desk lamp that has a single bulb. So it's a really focused light. So when you do sit down to do your notes, you are able to benefit from that. Now, when you're talking about people who do shift work, and we're going to talk about shift work a little bit at the end, but it is important during your quote, awake times to try to expose yourself to blue light. And it's important during the times when you're supposed to be Going to sleep to avoid blue light, but I'll get to that in a minute. So light help set our circadian rhythms. But it is not the only thing that cues our SCN that it's what it's supposed to do with our circadian rhythms. Exercise also clues cues in our scn. Theoretically when we wake up in the morning, we're going to be energetic and we're going to get on with our day. We're going to do more activity during the day and as we wind down we are going to stop moving as much. Low intensity exercise reduces cortisol and makes serotonin more available, which remember melatonin is made from serotonin. So low intensity exercise two hours before bed can be helpful at improving sleep. High intensity exercise releases endorphins and serotonin. Now it temporarily increases cortisol levels but, but some people do find that even high intensity exercise can help them sleep better as long as they do it at least two hours before bedtime. Social activity enhances oxytocin, our bonding chemical, and reduces stress. And it's often associated with being awake. So when we are with other people, it, it helps us feel like we want to bond, engage in pro social activities tends to reduce cortisol level which makes serotonin more available eventually. But when we are around other people and we're socializing, it's typically sending the cue to our SCN that is not time to sleep yet. It's better if you can have some downtime, some me time, some quiet time, whatever you want to call it. Non social time. 30 minutes before bed. And you know, with little kids we read them a story. That's not what this SCN really cues in as social activity because the child is listening and you know, taking in the story. The child is not engaging in interactive conversation or interactive activity to a large part. So social activity can be a cue. And body temperature also signals awakeness or time for sleep. As body temperature increases, the SCN gets the cue that hey, it's time to be awake. And as body temperature decreases, the, the body gets the cue that it's time to go to sleep. Now this makes total sense to me now. When I was in my graduate program, all of our classes were in the basement, the classrooms were in the basement of the hospital and it was freezing down there during the summer. You know, this is in Florida. So outside if it's 90 degrees, inside it was like sub zero. And whenever I get really cold, I get really sleepy. And it makes sense because my super chiasmatic Nucleus is saying, hey, you're not socializing, you're sitting still, you're not moving around a lot and you're freezing. I guess it's time to go to sleep. Which it really wasn't. But so this can help you understand, you know, maybe why you might start feeling sleepy at certain times. But it also can help you understand why it's important to be cool when you're trying to sleep at night. So make sure that your bedding is conducive to cool sleeping. I have a boxer and he is like a one dog heating unit. And whenever he comes and presses up against me, I might as well have a heating pad on. So I'm definitely not staying cool. Then having fans circulating, having breathable sheets and things, those can be very, very helpful, whatever you need to do to regulate your body temperature. They've also found that for some people having socks on, because we lose so much body heat through our feet, having socks on actually helps them regulate their body temperature. Now for some of the rest of us, we find that having socks on, we actually get way overheated. And, and one of my best friends gave me this little tip and it works really well for me and obviously for her to. When we sleep, keeping our not having socks on and keeping our feet uncovered helps us from waking up in the middle of hot flashes. So you know, just a little tip out there, you can try it. Other causes of circadian rhythm disruption may not be related specifically to the super chiasmatic nucleus, although you'll be able to see how they're integrated. Caregiving to someone who needs care around the clock. And you know, this can be. When I foster orphan puppies and kittens, I have to get up every two to four hours, depending on how old they are to feed them. When you have an infant at home, you have to get up every two to four hours to feed them. If you have a loved one at home who has Alzheimer's or dementia or cancer or something, and you're having to get up around the clock or they frequently get up through the night, then that can disrupt your circadian rhythms. Have sharing a room with someone who gets up and down frequently throughout the night, even if it's just to go to the bathroom, can also disrupt your circadian rhythms because that does can jar you out of your, your, your deep sleep. So it is important to try to make your sleep as consistent as possible. If you have like when we have bottle babies foster animals at the house, a lot of times my daughter and I will switch off so you know, she will take the first four hours of the night and I will take the last four hours in the night. That way we can arrange our sleep schedule so we can get a solid eight. We just adjust when we go to sleep or when we get up. It's not great for circadian rhythms, but it's one of those things. It's like when you have an infant at home. You know, obviously, just because it's going to disrupt your circadian rhythms for the first, oh, 16 years of your life, their life, it doesn't mean that you don't necessarily want to have children. It means that you need to be aware of this and do as much as you can to protect your circadian rhythms. Still, try to get, keep a stable sleep schedule. If you can, try to do the handoff. My husband was on midnight shift when my children were, you know, infants and not sleeping through the night yet and he would take the middle of the night feeding. So I was able to get a good solid amount of sleep. That is really important for my health and my mental health. If you're working with somebody, if you have somebody living in your household who needs care around the clock, they're an adult, but they have some other issue going on. You know, you can also think about getting respite care to come in, having an overnight nurse come in and maybe you can only afford to do that some, maybe you can have friends who are willing to come in and take shifts if you start feeling like you're getting really run down. My point being sometimes we're not going to be able to avoid the circadian rhythm disruption. But we need to be mindful of when it is starting to wear us down, when it's starting to affect our libido, affect our immune system, affect our energy, affect our mood. Because when we are depleted, we don't have energy to give to anybody else. So we need to be able to maintain ourselves. Shift work. And I, I know we have to have shift work there. You know, the light, the world does not shut down at 8pm so if you work a shift, keep your schedule consistent on your days off, stay up all night. If you are working an all night shift, that's really important. And then when you get home, try to get to bed before daylight. Early morning light exposure will trigger that awake cycle. So if you can get home and you can get inside before that sun rises, you are going to be well ahead of the game. Otherwise your SCN is going to get really confused because it sees daylight, it sees dawn, and it says oh, okay, now I'm supposed to be awake. Pain. Pain can keep us from getting good quality sleep. It can keep us from resting when we're not able to sleep through the night. When pain is waking you up throughout the night, it's going to disrupt those circadian rhythms. So it's important to do what you can to regulate your pain going back. You know, go back to the basics. Ergonomics. Do you have a good pillow? Do you have a good mattress? If you can use heat or cold to, you know, ice or heat in order to make the pain go away. If you're cleared by your physician, can you do simple stretches in order to alleviate some of the pain? I have a bad back. Talked about it before. Y' all know that. And I recently, finally, wish I would have done it 20 years ago. Got an inversion table. And inverting for me for five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night makes a huge difference in the amount of back pain I experience. So, cons, think about what you can do and try to figure out what works to alleviate your pain. Also remember, as stress goes up, pain goes up. So part of your pain or pain management strategy may also require reducing your stress. But when you do these things and you start being able to sleep through the night and, you know, set your goals reasonable, shoot at at first, maybe shoot for a good solid six. And if you can get that, then you can start trying to work up to that good solid 8 that technically, even as adult, we're still supposed to get, but a good solid six or eight hours. If you do that consistently for a month or more, you're going to find that that circadian rhythm starts to reset and you start to feel, in a lot of times, increases in energy. You may start to see improvements in your libido, you may start to see improvements in your. In your attitude. Because remember, our mood is connected not only to neurotransmitters like serotonin and cortisol, or, and hormones like cortisol, but also to our gonadal hormones. And when our gonadal hormones or our cortisol is out of whack, it can make serotonin and GABA and our, quote, happy chemicals less available to us. So it's important to make sure that we are setting the circadian rhythm so our body stays on the correct cloth clock and it knows when it's supposed to secrete what we've talked about. Light and, and it's important to eliminate light as much as possible. In your bedroom, make sure that your blinds Block out as much light as possible. A lot of times they don't do everything. I know mine doesn't or mine don't. So on full moon nights, a lot of times it's really bright in my room unless I pull the curtains as well. And it a lot of times is worth it to make the investment in light blocking curtains. And you can get those at, you know, big box stores, you can get them offline. They're not super expensive as curtains go, but it is some something of an investment if you don't have a lot of, you know, just cash laying around somewhere. Temperature. You can get personal coolers, if you will, and they call them like tabletop swamp coolers. Or you can make your own. You can get a, like a 8 by 8 glass pan and fill it with ice cubes and water and set a fan just beyond that so the fan blows over, you know, a little tabletop fan. So the fan blows over the ice in the water that humidifies the air and it blows the cool air onto you. Now, it doesn't last forever, but it does last for several hours. So it can help cool your particular area down. This works especially well if you have a significant other who tends to run cooler than you do. And you know, the temperature that you want it, they think it is just, you know, an ice box in there. So regulate your temperature as much as possible. Keep your physical temperature down late at night. If you have traumatic brain injury or neurodegenerative disorders that impact the hypothalamus, if that hypothalamus is not healthy, if the suprachiasmatic nucleus is not healthy, then your circadian rhythms may be off. And we do see this unfortunately a lot in people with Alzheimer's and dementia. Also, you know, as I said, people with traumatic brain injury and that can be from a car accident or from a tumor or something else. It's important to work with your neurologist if you have something that is neurological in nature to find out, you know, what are the best ways that you can regulate your circadian rhythms. Now down to the two, the last two. Caffeine. Remember, it stays in your body for up to 12 hours after you consume it. So if you are consuming caffeine at noon, you are probably impairing your ability to get good quality deep sleep until after midnight. And you know, like me, I get up at 3 in the morning, so that doesn't leave much time to get good quality deep sleep. Try to cut back on caffeine 12 hours before you go to bed. So if you go to bed at 8pm, cut out the caffeine at 8am and that is a huge ask for a lot of people. Cut back at least and be cognizant of when you are consuming it. If you are drinking caffeine and it has no effect on you, that tells me that your body has actually become caffeine resistant, if you want to think about it that way, or tolerant to caffeine, which probably means you have some level of HPA axis disregulation, and that is probably negatively impacting your circadian rhythms. The last one is alcohol. And so many people think, oh, well, alcohol helps me fall asleep. Well, that's true, it does. It helps you drift off to sleep faster. However, as it leaves your body, it actually prompts an excitatory response, an anxiety type response, because the body can't secrete GABA quickly enough not to get into pharmacology here. So where, whereas the first couple hours may be decent, probably not great deep sleep during that period, but you're at least sleeping after that, your sleep is going to be significantly disrupted. Now, if you have sleep apnea or allergies where you tend to mouth, breathe and snore, alcohol can actually, even during the first part of the night, you may drift off to sleep faster. But it has been shown to worsen sleep apnea and has been shown to worsen snoring. So cutting back on that alcohol so you have a blood alcohol level of 0.0 when you go to bed is ideal. Um, you know, you need to be reasonable, you need to pick your battles. You know, I've told you all before that, you know, I am not going to quit doing animal rescue and I'm not going to kick all the dogs out of the bed. So, you know, I am choosing to do things that I know may negatively impact my circadian rhythm some nights. But I'm also more mindful. And if I feel like I'm starting to get run down, then I may either ask for help. That's the nice thing about fostering animals. There's always other fosters who can pinch hit for a few days. If you're starting to get run down or, you know, in terms of the dogs, I will kick them all out and make them, oh my gosh, sleep on the sofa. How dare I? But that way I know I can get my rest because I know that's important to, to me being able to do everything that's important in my rich and meaningful life. So circadian rhythms, really important. Going back to this first thing, it impacts your digestive system, your hunger. It can contribute to obesity because you start having more difficulty regulating blood sugar. It contributes to insulin resistance. And your body doesn't know when it's hungry. So a lot of times you have this underlying urge to just kind of eat. It impacts the endocrine system and the your cortisol levels, which can impact your energy levels. It impacts your reproductive system, your immune system and cognition, both in the short term and potentially long term, because disrupted circadian rhythms can set you up for development of, of cognitive issues later in life. Are there any questions? I so appreciate y' all being here with me this first Monday of the new year. And I hope to see you obviously every day throughout the rest of this six week course, if you will, on strategies to improve your health and happiness. Now, if you missed the first two weeks, which I did, obviously back in December, they are available on, what's the word? On Demand on the YouTube channel. So you can go back and look at those. My goal is to provide you one actionable tidbit of information every single day. So you can use that tidbit or not, in order to start improving your health and happiness for the rest of your life. Not just for the moment. Everybody, have a fabulous day and I will see you tomorrow, same time, same station.