Want to wake up already charged and with an extra gear despite the alarm going off early? The secret is bright light in the morning.
Exposure to bright light in the morning is commonly used to treat sleep disorders related to circadian cycles .
What are circadian rhythms? (We talked about it here 👉“ Are Your Circadian Rhythms Off? ”) Your body has an internal clock that tells you when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to be awake.
These rhythms also control your alertness, body temperature, and the daily cycle of many of your hormones, so circadian rhythms will make you feel active or sleepy at certain times of the day.
The problem arises when these rhythms are “off” and your natural sleep time overlaps with your waking hours , making you perpetually tired and less capable of performing your daily activities.
What most influences our circadian rhythms?
Cortisol , also known as the stress hormone because it is produced in greater quantities following an increase in psycho-physical stress conditions such as: training, thermal shock, fasting, surgery, interpersonal conflicts, etc., in addition to basal conditions where it is released rhythmically.
In all of this, cortisol is, in fact, the main responsible/regulator of our circadian rhythms, regulating not only the normal functioning of our organs and metabolisms, but also the responses of the HPA axis to stress.
What is the HPA hormonal axis?
The HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis is the main neuroendocrine axis that regulates the set of processes that maintain constant conditions in the organism (defined as homeostasis).
It also intervenes in counter-regulation mechanisms whenever there is a deviation from the equilibrium situation (a typical example is maintaining the correct concentration of sugars in the blood).
Reset your circadian rhythms with bright light in the morning
Morning exposure to light improves sleep quality , mood and overall health, these are the main benefits.
Furthermore, our cortisol levels are influenced by the duration , intensity and biological timing of exposure to light; in fact, doing so resets the phases of our internal biological clock.
Cortisol levels decrease throughout the day and are lowest near bedtime , while during the night they tend to rise until they reach their peak around the time we wake up in the morning.
So as soon as you wake up we recommend that you immediately expose yourself to intense natural light or, alternatively, artificial light.
Sources:
- Increase in cortisol concentration due to standardized bright and blue light exposure on saliva cortisol in the morning following sleep laboratory. Stress. 2020 Aug 10:1-7. doi:10.1080/10253890.2020.1803265 .
- Stress & sleep: A relationship lasting a lifetime.
- Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2020 Oct;117:65-77. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.08.024. Epub 2019 If
