The Golightly Cure for Insomnia

A while back, my stepdaughter Heather and her family did the pioneer experience in western New York. While there, they dressed the part of a family circa 1809 and got to “tackle the daily chores necessary for your family’s survival — anything from fetching water to working the fields and gardens, caring for the farm animals, and cooking meals over an open hearth.” They also got to revel in the “solitude” of a quiet night while basking in the warm glow of firelight and candles. The latter meant they enjoyed a whole weekend with being exposed to any artificial light (although one might question why a light bulb is considered artificial and a candle is not).

More importantly, I guess, they suffered no exposure during that time to the blue light spectrum we are constantly bathed in from our phones, tablets, computers, and TV sets, which means they probably slept better. This, anyway, according to Linda Geddes, who explains “What I learned by living without artificial light.” In her article, Geddes asks “so what would happen if we turned off the lights?” She wonders if it would have sleep benefits or other positive effects and even if such a thing is possible in light-polluted urban areas. She undertakes an ad hoc experiment in which she exposed herself to as much natural light as possible during the day and then, after 6 p.m., she relied on candlelight or dim red lighting for illumination. Among the things that she discovered was that, on a bright sunny day the light outside could be as high as 100,000 lux, the unit of measure for “luminous emittance.” When she measured the light in her office, it was 120 lux, lower than it would be outside just after sunset. To sum her experience up quickly, she found, as other studies have, that on the days where she had the most exposure to natural light, she got sleepier earlier (as the circadian rhythm kicked in and her body naturally released melatonin) and slept longer. Her simple conclusion is this:

It’s ridiculously simple. But spending more time outdoors during the daytime and dimming the lights in the evening really could be a recipe for better sleep and health. For millennia, humans have lived in synchrony with the Sun. Perhaps it’s time we got reacquainted.

The circadian rhythm (CR) is indeed a strange and wondrous thing. The term comes from the Latin circa (around or approximately) and diem (day). It’s a form of “chronobiology” that comes to humans, animals, plants, and even bacteria built-in at birth and is triggered by external cues called “zeitgebers,” which include light, temperature, and/or a chemical reaction in which the oxidation state of atoms changes (called a “redox cycle”). Scientists first got a clue as to its existence through plant and bee studies.

For most adults, energy levels in the CR drop to their lowest between 2 and 4 a.m. and after lunch between 1 and 3 p.m. (boy, can I vouch for that!). The latter is due to your CR telling your body to release melatonin and drop your core temperature around that time. In other words, siestas or power naps or whatever you want to call them are a completely natural occurrence and should be required by law for optimum health and sanity. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself, along with my private theory that the mondo-contentious divide in our country is due in great part to the shocking lack of PMZs [p.m. snoozes, pronounced pem-zees] among our populace.

LSS [long story short], Geddes mentions in her article that the presence of light, especially blue spectrum light, when natural light is absent (night in other words) is very disruptive to our CRs. That means, unless you happen to live in the middle of the Gobi Desert or some geographically isolated equivalent, what you see below is the one truly effective remedy to light-induced CR meddling and guarantee of a good night’s sleep:

Note: The cat is optional.

Images:

Overview of biological circadian clock in humans. By NoNameGYassineMrabetTalk fixed by Addicted04. The work was done with Inkscape by YassineMrabet. Information was provided from “The Body Clock Guide to Better Health” by Michael Smolensky and Lynne Lamberg; Henry Holt and Company, Publishers (2000). Landscape was sampled from Open Clip Art Library (Ryan, Public domain). Vitruvian Man and the clock were sampled from Image:P human body.svg (GNU license) and Image:Nuvola apps clock.png, respectively. CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3017148.

Still photo from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Fair Use.