Your Clock

Light is one of the most important environmental factors that control you biological clock. Light sensed through your eyes helps program your body clock, affecting when you feel most awake, and when you feel the most tired.

The first light of day sets the schedule for your natural sleep-wake cycle. If you are having trouble sleeping you might need to reboot your biological clock to help you sleep and wake up at the right times.

There is nothing more refreshing than a good night’s sleep. It renews your energy, improves your ability to learn and make good decisions. For the science folks out there the hypothalamus plays a role in the regulation of sleep.

Getting a good night’s sleep in the arctic can be challenging to say the least. In the summer months when the sun shines, more often than not, almost 23 hours a day and when it is not shining it is still twilight and not really dark. During this time we have a tendency to stay up late and get up early and feel like we are on the go every second of the day. Energy to get things done is easy to find.

Then in the winter months there is barely four hours of possible sunlight and none of it in the morning hours when you need that first light of day to set your sleep-wake cycle. So we have a few tricks to help combat the overwhelmed hibernation feeling.

We have a lamp in the bedroom that has a full spectrum bright light bulb in it and on a timer so that the light turns on about 25 minutes before the alarm clock is set to ring. This helps give the eyes something to trigger wake-up time. It gives just enough light so that we can at least drag ourselves out of bed and get the coffee started.

Then there is the Happy Light! Yup Verilux named their product Happy Light and the Deluxe Energy Lamp that sits on my office desk give up to 10,000 LUX of natural spectrum daylight to help the body recalibrate or stay in a normal sleep-wake rhythm, 30 or so minutes in the morning sure makes a big difference in my day.

The only hibernations trigger that I always have a hard time fighting off is the overpowering urge to eat cheese in very large quantities. So as I go along day by day in the next three months I will fight the cheese monster and try to maintain a balanced diet of all things good for me.

Wish me luck!