5 Minute Facts - Circadian/Ultradian Rhythm Optimization

This is episode 250 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Beautiful. Welcome. Welcome to Performance Power. The way this works is that we only do this once a month, so it's not that often. But we bring in a topic that I do a little research on. We dig deep because this is what people want to know about in order to perform their best, in order to feel their best, show up in work, be able to physically perform and have energy. That's what most people want who are looking for information from us. So we do our five minute facts and then we open it up and answer the questions that you want to know for your nutrition, for your training, for your overall performance. It might be injuries or recovery. So have your questions ready and we're going to dive into our five minute facts. So here's the thing. Normally I limit this to five minutes. I've got five facts, five minutes. I've done the research and really taken a look. However, this time it's going to be really tough to keep it to five minutes because we're doing circadian and ultradian rhythms. Now, circadian and ultradian rhythms. You've probably heard of circadian rhythms before, but maybe not ultradian rhythms. So how many people have heard of circadian rhythms? Yeah, lots of people. And how about ultradian rhythms? Not so much. Okay, this is going to be really impactful for you because this is what's going to affect your energy on a day to day basis. So here's fact number one. In five minute facts, nearly every tissue and every organ in our entire body has a biological clock. However, the master clock, the holy grail of clocks. In our body, the master clock is in a group of 20,000 nerve cells called your suprachiasmic nucleus. And this is located in our hypothalamus. So that is where our master clock is. So that's fact number one. Fact number two, ready? I know you're going to be hit with some of the science. Don't worry, you don't have to memorize it. It's going to get really pertinent, really quick. So fact number two, this suprachiasmic nucleus controls the production of melatonin. Yes, that's right, melatonin. I'm sure you've heard of melatonin. I think everybody here has heard of melatonin. So that nucleus controls melatonin. And that's the thing that makes us sleepy when we're about to go to bed, it makes us sleepy because it relays information from our eyes all the way to that hypothalamus. So that means that right now, in looking in natural light, my melatonin production would be very, very low. But if I started to gaze at a sunset, that melatonin level would start to increase. So here's the beautiful thing about it. Our eyeballs are the only piece of our brain that's exposed to the outside world. The only piece of our brain that's exposed. So it's taking that information in and telling us what to do with our biological clock. So the Circadian rhythm is 24 hours. That's all it is, is 24 hours in the circadian rhythm. So that was fact number two. We've got our melatonin, the suprachiasmic nucleus in our hypothalamus. Less light makes us more drowsy, More light makes us less drowsy. Fact number three, the circadian rhythm influences the following. Our hormone release, our eating habits, our digestion, our body temperature. So basically everything about our function, our Circadian rhythm, that 24 hour clock influences us. So it affects our energy up, it affects our energy down. It has other factors that control the circadian rhythm, not limited to things like a mutation in our genes, shift work, jet lag, I don't know. Anybody have jet lag lately? Absolutely, absolutely. Light from electronic devices, all of those things affect our circadian rhythm. Now here is where it gets really interesting. In fact, number four, we have what's called an ultradian rhythm. And our ultradian rhythm is most easily noticed in our sleep cycles, but we usually don't notice it during the day. But most of us have heard that we've got sleep cycles and some of us even know that our sleep cycles are between that 90 minutes to two hours. Well, that same thing is going on throughout the entire day, 90 minutes to two hours. We have what's called an ultradian rhythm throughout our day. So this is what it is. It's a quantifiable physiological pattern within our 24 hour clock called our circadian rhythm. And it's our body's way of maintaining everything in order to operate properly. So it's mini versions, 90 minute to 120 minute versions of our circadian rhythm on the day to day cycle. But here's the thing, it contains what's called a performance peak and a performance trough. When you go into your ultradian rhythm, you get 90 minutes in and you're at your peak, your peak of focus, your peak of energy, your peak of clarity. And then because of all these processes that are going on, we start to enter the trough. Everybody get it. So that's what's happening in an ultradian rhythm. So we don't notice it much during the night, but we do see it. It affects our REM patterns, but it's more noticeable during this day, in this 1.5 to 2 hour cycle. This is happening over and over and over again all day long in these cycles. So here's fact number five. It begins with this mental activity or physical activity. So if we start our day, we get either mentally focused or physically focused or both. And because we do that, we're burning through significant amounts of oxygen, calories, glucose and other fuels in this 1.5 to 2 hour cycle. But then we reach the performance peak and we start going down into the trough. And the reason we're going into the trough is because there are byproducts from the mental and physical waste that happen. These are the waste products from our energy output. So these are brain cells, body breakdown. All of the things that are happening in this build to the peak are starting to build up. All this waste product is building up. So by 1.5 hours in, we've got this buildup and that's what starts to bring us into the trough. This is happening every two hours of our entire day. So this is what it looks like. All this metabolic waste is building up cellular debris, data bits from thinking that we want to discard, that we don't need. It's building up in our system and our productivity and our performance start to decline into the energetic low point that we call the trough. Now this is when, this is how we feel. Fatigued, basy, not able to focus as well, irritable, even distracted, hungry, groggy. So this is where we get the urge to go to the restroom, to have some sugar, to get a coffee, to eat carbs. It's all going to be when we get into that trough of our ultradian rhythm. So if we don't do a short break here, that's when we suffer. So this is the critical part. There's a break that needs to happen, the break that needs to happen when we're coming into these ultradian trough, this performance trough. And that break, guess what it does? It cleans everything up. It goes and discards the waste product, all the debris from thinking, from focusing, from physical movement, and it discards all that debris so that we can start a new cycle. And we go into the second or third or whatever ultradian cycle. So here's what happens. If we don't take the break. Our next performance peak in the next ultradian cycle is diminished. So we have the opportunity of doing this 1.5 to 2 hour cycle, taking a 20 minute break. 20 minutes is ideal. I'm lucky if I can get most of my clients to do 10. 20 minutes is ideal. 5 minutes is better than nothing. 20 minutes is ideal. There's a reason I'm repeating this. Because most people don't want to receive and think that they need to do 20 minutes. They think they can get away with two minutes, 20 minutes ideal. And here's what happens when you clean everything up. Then your next ultradian cycle, you get to peak just like you peaked on that first one. If you don't get the recovery in that break, then your next peak is subsequently lower. And if again you don't get a break, it's again subsequently lower. And again you don't get a break. It's lower and lower. So throughout your day, throughout those ultradian cycles, your performance peaks get lower and lower and lower and lower. And this is why you turn into a mad person around 4pm in the afternoon. You're a complete raving lunatic if anything, anything goes wrong in your life. Because we didn't get those little recoveries throughout our ultradian cycle. Okay, so there's a thing called the diminished returns, these subsequently lower performance peaks. However, there is also an escalating risk for your overall health in the long run. So what happens when we keep ignoring these little breaks during the day and we push through because we're overachievers and we can do so much and so many people need us and we push through. We push through. Here is the long term stacking effect over doing this day after day after day. And some of us, some of us have felt the effects of burnout. Wow, it's awful. Yes. But when you look back you realize, wow, I never really even gave myself a mental or physical break at lunch, never mind on the two hour cycle. So if it's ignored over time, this is what happens. And I promise you that this list that I'm going to give you is not even a quarter of what the real psych scientific list is. So I'm just going to give you a few. And they are this, if continually ignored. Increase increased inflammation, increased blood pressure, increased blood sugar in an insulin imbalance, decreased immunity, an imbalance of neurotransmitters, decreased mental capacity, disrupted digestion gaps in memory, slowed metabolism, increased cravings, decreased motor skills and more. The list goes on. So the reason I really wanted to bring it to a tangible, simple thing, it's called an ultradian cycle, is so that you value these incredible little breaks on the 2 hour, on the 1.5 to 2 hour span of time, 20 minutes are ideal. And what happens is your cells rejuvenate, your blood sugar stabilizes, your hormone stabilizes, your neurotransmitters are rebalanced, the toxins are flushed and your systems ramp right back up for another 90 minute cycle and you're good to go. All right, so that is what's called an ultradian cycle and it exists within your circadian rhythm. It's your ultradian rhythm within your circadian rhythm. And it exists within all of us. It's ongoing all the time and we as human overachievers ignore it. Now, today, this was the longest five minute facts that I've ever done because I normally keep it to five minutes. But this one I felt was so important I dug a little deeper into those facts. So the first thing we do here is we open up the questions specifically on that topic first and then we open it up to whatever question you have. So if somebody has a question specifically on circadian rhythm or, or ultradian rhythm, please bring those forward now and then we'll dive into other questions that you have or questions that have been fielded. Yes, we've got a question from Elk and Jasmine. We're going Jasmine here first. Go ahead. Hi.

Well done.

I would love to know, like, how long does that peak last?

Like, it seems like such a bummer.

That the peak happens and then there's a drop.

Like how long do we get the peak for?

For it's a build. So the, the thing about an ultradian rhythm is that when we're first getting into a cycle, there's usually about a 10 to 15 minute span of time that has some resistance. And so you're going to notice that in order to, let's say you're at the computer and you want to get into a deep work cycle, that it takes something for you to really get into deep work or deep flow. Same thing for physical activity. It might, you know, it might feel a little rusty at first, but then once you're in it, it takes about 15 minutes to get into it. So what you're experiencing is the kind of ramping up, ramping up, ramping up. So when you think of peak, don't really think of it as like, oh, I only have two Minutes of peak, like a male orgasm. It's not like that. So it's more like. Sorry for any of the men on the call? No. Here we love our men for what's really happening. It's a build, build, build in. In ability to focus, ability to put your brain at the task of whatever you want it to go towards. So there's a build, build, build happening. So really the peak is like a big chunk. That peak could be like an ideal 45 minutes or an ideal 30 minutes. And most of us, if you think about it, you experience that when you're in deep work. You're just, you're just cranking it out, you've got it going on, you're in deep flow, you're producing, producing, producing, and you are crushing it. That's what it looks like when you're peeking. And then you kind of get to a point where you're just like, this is when you just have a distraction or you have to go pee or whatever. And that's when you're coming off of your peak. And that's where it's worth. When you go to the washroom and you get your glass of water, that's when you look outside and you really see it all. Or you take some deep breaths or do a 10 minute meditation, or you walk around the block and you come back to work. And that is how specific, specifically, you are able to become a master producer. You can crush out the information, the material, the energy, the whatever by taking those little breaks. So don't think of that peak as being like, boom, done and gone. It's like a build, build, build, build, build, and then coming back down. And then that 20 minute break is when you start building back up again. Or that break, you get it and you're refreshed and then you start the build again and you go into another deep, slow, deep work cycle. Does that make sense? Thank you. Vanessa's asking what a break looks like. Yeah, yeah, exactly that. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna pop you off here and then I'm gonna add. So, Vanessa, for what does that break? Exactly. So bathroom break, water break, go for a little walk, do a. Do a 10 minute guided meditation sometimes. What I like to say, and this is something that a mentor told me many years ago, and it's a change is as good as a break. Sometimes for me, that might look like what I will do. And this is very powerful. What I will do is I'll go and I'll take a load of laundry. If I'm working from Home. I'll be in deep work. And then that 20 minute break, I'll go to the bathroom, get some water, take a load of laundry that didn't get put away. Put it away. And then that 15 minutes is done and I'm back at work. And then that change. Sweeping something that's mindless. Chopping vegetables. Sweep, sweeping, Mindless work. And your brain just decompresses. Your body decompresses. If it's something physical, you might need to lie back and just rest for a moment. So those are the, the things there. Was there anything else on any other sleep? Okay, what about sleeping? Yeah, you could do it. You could do a 10 minute nap, a 15 minute nap. Absolutely. And one thing to notice on those naps, if you go to do something like that, like a meditation after lunch or a little calm time after lunch, around that 1pm time, if you fall asleep, that's an indicator that you didn't get enough sleep the night before. So that key time, if you're tending to nod off around that 1pm time, usually there wasn't enough quality or quantity of sleep the night before. So that's a good indicator there. And was there anything else on that one, Vanessa?

Well, I know Elka had a question, but I. I did. Okay, well, yeah, so I have so many questions, but I'm gonna keep it to two. One is, so I'm thinking about like technology and how like, sometimes I'll like also like call a friend then, or FaceTime. Like, is that restorative enough for a break or is that.

Okay, so here's a distinction. You know, when you get on a call with this person, you feel re. Energized, rebooted and whatever. And then there's this person you get on the call with and you're drained and whatever. The more you have to really think and engage and go deep, that's what is creating the energy that we need to draw upon. Right. So you could call a quick, check in with your spouse and feel like, oh, it was just part of that break. Feel really good, feel loved, pop a little message. And it's part of that break. But then you try and fill the task of calling the driving regulatory board and you feel like it was a very taxing thing and you're actually depleted for your actual training. So really important one there. Awesome. Any other ones? Okay, I'm going to pop over to Elk. Thank you, Vanessa. Very, very good. Okay, Elk, what do you got?

Actually, it's very similar to the break question because I can see myself. I get the Change that just doing something different is. Already gives you a break. But I can see myself doing the 90 minute and then 20 minutes of housework or cooking and then does it have to be, would that also work? But then actually even just the thought of that stresses me out.

This is important. And this is what Jasmine and Vanessa and Elk are pointing out to and all the other achievers on this call. That's who's on this call. We're all achievers, actually overachievers. So this is the bane of our existence is that, well, if I have a break, I better make it really worthwhile. And in that break, okay, I better do this and this and this. So here's the. When I say change is as good as a break, you have to be really conscious about what you need right now. And if I've been sitting for one full cycle, one alternating cycle, I have a client who's an author and we worked on this very specifically throughout her entire writing planning and her writing schedule. If she's sitting and diving into that deep focus for an hour and a half and then she knows that she's losing, she's lost her flow, it's declining, then her getting up and sweeping the floor or doing a walk outside is probably the ideal break or even laundry or something different is the ideal break. Because she's been sitting, she's been static, she's been staring at a screen. And so all of the processes around the static ness, the, the, the non movement, the deep brain focus, that's what needs a break. So her body needs a physical movement that's a break from sitting. Her brain needs long term vision, which is a break from clothing, close term vision. Her body needs something that's blood flow and, and actually moving around in different positions. So we be aware of. Mind you, if you were doing, if I was coaching in a retreat or on a physical space and there's high energy output, I'm on my feet for an hour and a half, I'm lots of language. Then I might want to lie on my back and read a little bit on my phone or on a book. And that would be the break. But if the person who was at this desk for the whole time they went and sat and read, that would not be the kind of break that they need. So be very aware of what you just went into. Deep work into what deep focus or deep clarity into. So that that constitutes what the best break is in that 20 minutes. And you can meditate while moving. So it could be a moving meditation to trying to have your eyes as wide as possible so that you're seeing and taking in as much as possible instead of the narrow focus on making jewelry or staring at a screen. So changing whatever the thing was so that there can be the debris and repair and toxin flushing from what the, what the buildup was in that particular output or energy output cycle. Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. Thank you.

Awesome. Awesome. Okay, other questions. What do we have? What else do we have? You can put your hands up or pop it in the chat. Feel free to ask other questions. What do we got? And we might be ready to move on from the ultradian and circadian cycle questions. Feel free to bring whatever you have going on. And I know there's a couple questions that people have sent in as well. What do you have? Oh, okay. I had a go ahead. We've got another one. Vanessa.

Okay, so one more. It's kind of. Well, first of all, I'm thinking about like schools and how we ask kids to focus for like eight hours straight and we don't give in these breaks. So one question was like developmentally does this shift from age and if so, how. And then the, the other question is about like thinking about the work. And I'm hearing you say that like if there's a change is okay, so thinking about like Jasmine, who's a therapist, so she's like seeing clients for two hours straight and then she switches and she starts writing. Is that like, is, is she still focusing? But is it enough of a shift or does it really have to be like a restorative? Like I'm not using my brain to.

Focus on work break, you know what? So if she did, let's say so let's say she had a couple clients and then went into writing. If she didn't break between those, she's going to see a decrease in performance, guaranteed. And she knows it. She's nodding because she's like, if I don't, there needs to be that transition of some sort of break because the kind of focus it takes in a, in a therapy session or a folk, a coaching session, she's holding space. She's, she's managing her own mind. She's focusing intensely on what they have going on. And, and so all of that work, that's, that takes an incredible amount of focus and she's holding that for that entire duration of time and then change to another client she might be able to do. So what I typically do is I would book to 45 minute clients back to back. There's my 90 minutes right there. And then if I don't have a 15 minute block between a next block of clients or a next block of creation. So for her, for her writing, then it would be a decrease in performance. I'm going to. This is where you see, these are, these are the behaviors that you'll see. Suddenly somebody's searching around the kitchen for a snack. Suddenly they're having to go and do some menial task that didn't get done in the morning routine. Suddenly there's this other thing that needs to get done. And then you notice that you're 30 minutes into your block of time of writing. And it's because your brain would not allow you to go into that next deep cycle of work because it was in a trough still, you weren't giving it the recovery. And then when we keep fighting that, instead we just get lower and lower performance and less and less of a good, deep, high quality chunk of work. And the interesting thing, I'm going to add another little tidbit here that I didn't say earlier. And it's this, this, this ultradian rhythm is happening at night and we see it in our sleep cycles. Boom, boom, boom. We get deep sleep, we go, we come back up, we get light sleep, we get REM sleep and it's flipped though, because the deep sleep is the longer portion and the active portion of our sleep is the 20 minutes and it's flipped in the daytime. So actually the most active brain time and body time is the longer portion and the 20 minutes is our deep rest is our deep rest portion during the day. So the only thing that happens that's a difference in the ultra and rhythm that's going on 24 hours a day is that it's flipped in what it is the deep activity versus deep rest at sleep versus the daytime. That makes sense. But yes. Oh, and the second question was for children. So I'm not as familiar with an ultradian cycle for children from a brain perspective. But here's, here's where the differences come in in development and motor skills and things like that for children. Children need and have, they've got shorter legs, they're more active than adults are, their brains are too. But they need that recovery. So they need the naps, they need the quiet time. So that's where from a curriculum standpoint, this is where if they had a learning cycle, but then they get to just have. Because their, their natural focused play when they're doing play by themselves or making that can be the calm rest time versus learning something and engaging and doing a task, and then they have something that's quieter, more quiet time. And from a child. If we look at active levels as an adult, that ideal of accumulation of active steps in a day is typically a 10,000 step day is the ideal 10,000 step for children. This is where elk may, you know, d dive into this. But the research shows that for children at 16,000. So if you've got that daytime activity, children are getting about 16,000 steps in a day as an ideal, and adults are getting about 10,000 steps in a day as an ideal. Now, nowadays, kids are getting less than 10,000. Adults are getting around that 5,000 mark, and it's killing us. And yet we think that we don't need rest or breaks, but they can be. That's where we get from sitting work. We get those active breaks instead of. Instead of a sitting down for a coffee break after you've been on the computer for two hours, then that needs to be a walk around the block or it needs to be something else to get the brain and body performing optimally. So, yes, to your point, the kids are going through that same kind of thing. But, you know, their sleep ultradian is a longer span. They need more sleep that 12 hours of sleep. And then during the day, they just have these short little ultradian cycles. I don't know if it's shorter or longer. Exactly. I'd have to research that. But I did. I dove into it more on adults. So I hope that helps. Okay, Michael, we've got a question here. What do you have? Just unmute there.

I was just going to comment. When you think about brakes, I know through my last six months, it's kind of. You can just think of it as cognitive load. Do something that is not. Because I suffered from a concussion still. And you got a break and you can't. I couldn't, like, bike and listen to a podcast at the same time.

Yeah, on the home.

So just have a break, go and like, just take a cognitive load off your brain. It's an easy way of thinking about it. And that's all I wanted to say.

I love that. Thank you so much, Michael. Because we aren't aware of it until we have to be, until we have a concussion, until we've gone through burnout, until there's something going wrong. And then suddenly Michael's brain cannot handle doing a physical and a mental thing or two mental things coming at once because his brain is healing. And that's ultimately what happens when we've gone through burnout or we've gone through concussion or we've gone through these, these scenarios that make us urgently have to stop the way we've been doing things. And now with this information we can proactively go and just build in the secret to performance. The secret to ultimate production and happiness and emotional stability and health versus the stacking that happens when we're not giving ourselves what we need on just the day to day basis. Okay, we're going to wrap it up there. That is our Performance Power for this month. I so appreciate such fantastic questions. This is a wonderful topic. Please share this with the people that you serve and know and love because I really think that this makes such a massive difference for ourselves as individuals and those that we we care about. So have a wonderful rest of your day and join us on next month's Performance Power.

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