You fall asleep just fine… but then suddenly you’re wide awake at 3:00 AM, staring at the ceiling. Sound familiar? If this happens often, your internal clock, or circadian rhythms, might be playing a bigger role than you think. Let’s break it down with an analogy. Your Sleep System is Like a Water Cooler Picture […]
Imagine it’s summer and you live way up north. The sun is up for 22 hours of the day. Sunlight is good for sleep, right? Your sleep must be great. Except, no. It sucks. And the reason it sucks isn’t just because it’s hard to sleep when it’s bright outside (people in northern latitudes know […]
Let’s start with a couple obvious things. If you lived in a bunker, and you never ever saw the sun, the choice between permanent Daylight Saving Time and permanent Standard Time would really not matter to you. We could just pick one and roll with it, and you would continue to be a person who lives […]
Let’s say I want to boost circadian amplitude as much as I can. What light/dark schedule should I put myself on? This is a very tough question to answer experimentally, given how many possible light/dark schedules there are (infinite) and how expensive experiments like this can be (near infinite). But mathematical modeling can give us […]
“If you want to become an earlier chronotype, get more zeitgeber during your phase advance region and less zeitgeber during your phase delay region.” My head is in my hands. At parties, if no one stops me, I will often rant about math’s UI/UX problem. Listen, I say. We just casually drop that sin-1(x) is […]
Like anyone talking about anything, I tune my content to the audience. When I talk about our tech to travelers, I tell them our apps can help them get over jet lag faster. When I talk about our tech to shift workers, I highlight how we can help them sleep more and get them to […]
Here’s a weird thing about shift workers: Their sleep duration doesn’t always predict how sleepy they feel. Which is weird because… shouldn’t it? After all, somebody who sleeps for a longer period of time should feel less sleepy than someone who sleeps only for a short period of time, right? This paradox isn’t actually that […]
Don’t use your phone before bed! Turn off overhead lights in the evening! Block blue light as you wind down! There are tons of recommendations out there for helping you get to sleep at night that deal with light and technology, and—spoiler alert—I think they’re right on the money. But missing from the standard advice […]
At Arcascope, we’re focused on helping shift workers get more sleep and feel better with circadian-specific interventions. In particular, we’ve spoken to a lot of shift workers in the healthcare industry about their experiences working nights. A lot of the lessons we’ve learned are echoed in this recent survey we ran with 218 nurses who […]
Over and over again, I’ve heard shift workers say something like the following: “I have no rhythms.” “It’s just a constant experience of bleh.” “I get off shift, and more than tired, I just feel… flat.” “Ah,” I think when I hear this. “The amplitudes of their circadian rhythms have been squashed.” To steal an […]
