Six Ways to Reset Your Circadian Rhythm

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Rhythm is a key part of being healthy. It's not just exercise and eating and sleeping. And it's important because our bodies are biological organisms and we have to keep them in balance and in rhythm.

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Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy Podcast, a place for conversations that matter. And today I'm bringing you a special new feature called the Health Bite to improve your health because taking small steps daily can lead to significant health changes over time. Today we're gonna be talking about sleep and sleep is super important. Now our bodies know this and that's why we spend an average maybe a third of our entire lives sleeping. But sleep related issues are also really common. In fact, about 70 million Americans, we've all experienced periods when we have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, you may also have had trouble staying awake in the evening or getting out of bed in the morning or focusing on your work because you're too tired. Well, there are many reasons that can account for an occasional sleepless night or a few days of having trouble focusing on the job. But if you find yourself having persistent sleep issues, it's important to look at why. And it could be that your circadian rhythms are out of whack. Now, if you've ever experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter, which I certainly did many times in medical school, delivering babies, as an ER doc, you know how off you can feel after that. When your biological and circadian rhythms are out of balance, so is your health and you feel it. And today we're going to be talking about circadian rhythm, what they are, why they're important, and how you can reset yours when they become imbalanced. And, you know, one of my favorite books about this is called the Circadian Prescription by one of the leading scientists, doctors that I think has ever lived, a colleague of mine, a mentor, Dr. Sydney Baker, who's really the father of functional medicine. He's an unsung hero. And he wrote a book called the Circadian Prescription, if you want to learn more. But let's talk about what are circadian rhythms? Well, it's common to talk about circadian rhythm, and it's kind of a bit of a a misnomer because there are many circadian rhythms in your body. And they basically are the rhythms your body uses every day to keep all of your daily systems going, your daily cycles in your body. Now, most, the most well-known and the one we're going to focus on today is your daily cycle of sleep and wakefulness. Now, other Cycles control when you're hungry, when your body's hormonal activity has to do this or that, and many, many other bodily processes. Now, most circadian rhythms basically follow a 24-hour cycle. Circadian actually is from Latin, which means about a day. And they're guided by environmental cues like daylight, regular mealtimes, physical activity, even interactions with other people. And these cues are called zeitgebers. I don't know if I pronounced it right, but yeah, that's a real, I think it's a German word, with light being the most important one. So basically rhythm is a key part of being healthy. It's not just exercise and eating and sleeping and dealing with stress, but also rhythm. And it's important because our bodies are biological organisms and we have to keep them in balance and in rhythm. So what's the science behind circadian rhythms? Well, your body's circadian rhythms are governed by this internal clock. It's in your brain. It's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, big word, but anyway, it's located in your hypothalamus, the sort of control center in your brain, command central, so like the Air Traffic Control Center that regulates a lot of hormones and body functions. And this super-chismatic nucleus basically has about 20,000 neurons that are activated when your eyes perceive light. Now, when this happens, it releases a series of hormones, including cortisol, which helps you wake up and be fully alert at the right time. That's why I recommend in the morning, people get 20 minutes of sunlight first thing if they can by going outside, no sunglasses, but let your body be exposed to that light. And that triggers the release of cortisol and start your circadian rhythms. It can even help with sleep. It's a really powerful hack that you can use to help reset your biological and circadian rhythms. Your body also uses other clues, these zeitgebers in your environment, to determine what time of day or night to sync up this or that rhythm in your body. And it's quite an amazing thing. There's a whole science even of chronobiology about for example, which are the better times to give chemotherapy drugs for different cancers based on the activity of that organ, which is pretty amazing. Even in regular medicine, it's considered a legitimate strategy for how to actually time drugs based on your body's natural biological rhythms. You can just kind of Google chronobiology or go on PubMed and find more about it. So, what is it that kind of throws your circadian rhythm out of whack? Well, in a completely natural environment, your body's clock would normally be pretty dialed in. But in the 21st century, we live in a pretty screwed up world. There's so many things that throw us off balance, like screens, computers, phones, working overnight shifts, environmental stressors, all kind of knock our circadian rhythms out of whack. I know I certainly am a victim of that. I travel a lot. I go jet lag, travel different time zones, and I'm constantly shifting my biological rhythms, and it has a huge impact. In fact, they actually did a study on football players in football games, when you were a home team, you did better than, for example, if you played a team that had to travel across time zones. So if you were a team that traveled across time zones, statistically, you were going to lose far more often than if you were playing in your own time zone because of the important effect of rhythm on our performance and our health. So they also change these rhythms as we get older. For example, maybe when you get older, you're likely to go to sleep and wake up earlier, even if your teenage self preferred to stay up late and sleep till noon. That's because of these shifts in our hormones and biological rhythms as we go through life. Now, it's totally understandable if your circadian rhythms get off balance because of all these different insults we have to deal with in the 21st century, but they don't have to stay that way and you can learn how to dial in your own biological rhythms. So let's talk about how people manage it. Well, one of the ways they manage screwed up rhythms is sleep medication, but that's not great. Now, it can be useful when prescribed properly in a limited short-term way, but it's a terrible long-term strategy because the medication actually doesn't really alter your internal clock. You can become dependent on it, it manages the symptoms, and the root cause of your sleep issues still are not really addressed. So if you need a little extra help getting asleep, in addition to the protocols that we're going to talk about in a minute, you could try magnesium at night, melatonin, different herbs can work like passionflower, valerian root, chamomile, magnolia. There's a lot of herbs that can be very helpful. So there's lots of hacks that we can talk about. I've written a lot about this. We've had podcasts about it. We have a whole sleep course masterclass, which you can get as part of my content online. So let's talk about how do you reset your circadian rhythms? What do you do when your clocks off? Well, what do you do if you have to adjust it because you have new work hours or you're moving to a different time zone or traveling? Well, luckily you can reset your circadian rhythms. And again, that book, the Circadian Prescription is really good because it goes into great detail, particularly from a functional medicine perspective on how to do this. But in the meantime, let's talk about the simple ways you can reset your rhythms. And it's not really as hard as you might think. In fact, the best way to do this is really simple. it's really free, which means you can start doing them right away. First of all, getting rhythm, you know, I got rhythm that song. Well, you want to get in rhythm. Schedule when you go to bed and get up every day. If you can have the same bedtime and the same wake time, your rhythms will naturally start to go back into balance. So it's important to go to bed at the same time every night, to get up at the same time. It's not always possible, I know, but try to do it as best as possible. So over time, your body's going to adjust. to that new schedule and learns when it has to go to sleep, when it has to wake up, and just make sure you try to keep that even on weekends, vacations, it's hard sometimes, but try to do your best. If you want to adjust your clock, for example, to a new schedule or to go to bed earlier, you can't just do it overnight. You have to sort of shift slowly. So if your bedtime now is midnight but you want to go to sleep at 10, you can start dialing back by, let's say, half an hour earlier for a week and then another week, another half hour earlier until you get to when you want to be. And that can be also for your wake time. If you plan to, you know, you want to wake up earlier, you have to slowly change that. Otherwise, you're going to not feel good. And you can take your time and do this process slowly and your body will naturally adapt. The next thing is really create a great sleeping environment. And that means dark. And I use blackout shades. I use some people use those eye masks, make it quiet, cool, the body sleeps best probably 67, 66 degrees in the room. I know that sounds cold, but you need blankets. and the better you'll sleep. I once went winter camping with my daughter in Utah and it was like 30 degrees or whatever in the yurt and we, you know, there was no heat and we were in my sleeping bag and I slept the best I've slept in years. So cold actually can help you sleep well. Use earplugs, make sure there's no noise if you can. So really create a great ideal sleeping environment, make sure your bed's comfortable and so forth. Also try to get that in the morning 20 minutes of sunlight. That's going to make a big difference in helping your rhythm, helping you even sleep better at night. Exercise is great, not too late at night because that'll activate you, but during the day, in the morning, afternoon, you can exercise and that's going to give you more energy in the day. It's a wonder drug. It actually helps boost melatonin production. And, basically just don't do it late at night and it's better for your body natural rhythms to slow down and calm down in the evening. The other two drugs that we use all the time to either perk ourselves up, uppers and downers that are legal are caffeine and alcohol. So caffeine is an upper, alcohol is a downer. And those often will screw up sleep. And I have an Oura ring. I don't have any relationship with them, but I track my sleep. I kind of interesting to see what happens. And I know I was in Europe recently in Italy, and I drink more wine than I do normally. I don't usually drink much at all. And, you know, you kind of went in Italy, Rome, whatever, do it. And I noticed that my sleep was terrible, that my heart rate didn't go down, that my variability was worse, and that my sleep was more disrupted. So it's really not a good idea. So caffeine also is important. Make sure you, if you drink coffee, don't have it in the afternoon because it has a long half-life, five to seven hours, which means, you know, half of it's out of your body in five to seven hours. So if you're trying to go to sleep and still got caffeine in your system, it's going to be harder. Now, it depends on your metabolism. Some people are super fast metabolizers. metabolizers, some are slow, but it's really important to try to get either eliminate coffee and alcohol or at least for sure track how they affect your biology and your sleep. And basically the best thing if you're having sleep trouble is just to quit them. And then there's screens. We are so addicted to our screens. Me included. I work, I read, I use, you know, Kindle and all that, which might be better, but blue light is is a really important disruptor of sleep. Now we need blue light in the morning to activate cortisol and all the natural rhythms, and we need sunlight and so forth. But when you're using blue light at night, whether it's from fluorescent lights or LED lights in your house or your computer or your smartphone, it inhibits melatonin and can lead to cancer, not just sleep disruption, but all kinds of horrible things happen. So light is medicine, and you want the right light at the right time. You want more red light at night. kind of blue light in the morning and you can actually get even in your house these red light bulbs for night and you can get blue blocker glasses. So there's ways to start to protect yourself. Watching TV before you go to bed, not a great idea. But if you're doing that, use a blue blocker glasses. And you can reset your rhythm. So the key to health is not just food and exercise and sleep and stress reduction, but it's also rhythm. And it's important to remember that rhythm is a key ingredient for long-term health. So that's it. it for today's health bite. Sleep is really your body's medicine. If you want to learn more about it, check out Matthew Walker's book, why We Sleep. When your circadian rhythm is out of whack, it's not good and it's not good for your health. So I hope these tips I share with you today help you reset your natural rhythms. And that's really it for today's health bite. And be sure to share with your friends and family on social media. I'd love to hear how you've used different rhythm resetting strategies in your own life. Leave a comment. and we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter, and in it I share my favorite stuff. from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi everyone.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make.

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