Dhru Purohit Show - How to Sleep Better, Feel Happier, and Improve Your Health Using the Groundbreaking Science of Circadian Rhythms with Lynne Peeples

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Ketone-IQ, and Lifeforce. Our modern lifestyles have disrupted our natural circadian rhythms. Whether it's sleeping, eating, or exposing ourselves to light outside of our usual schedule, we're losing touch with these natural cycles and increasing our chances of developing disease. Today, on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Lynne Peeples to discuss how our daily habits are disrupting our inner clock and how this ongoing disruption can have long-term effects on our health. Lynne explains the link between circadian rhythm disruption, weight gain, and chronic diseases. She also uncovers the most common disruptors and the misconceptions surrounding them. Additionally, Lynne shares three key ways to immediately improve your circadian hygiene and why it's critical to align your day with your chronotype. Lynne Peeples is a science journalist whose writing has appeared in The Guardian, Scientific American, Nature, and other publications. Before her move to writing, she crunched numbers as a biostatistician for HIV clinical trials and environmental health studies. Peeples was an MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow and holds master's degrees in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health and in science journalism from New York University.    In this episode, Dhru and Lynne dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Circadian rhythm disruption (00:00:30 / 00:00:30) Rhythm disruption and weight gain ( 2:37/ 2:37) The history of the science on this topic (5:30 / 5:30) The top disruptors of our circadian rhythms ( 13:53 / 10:20) Consequences in our body and the impact on all-cause mortality (17:33 / 14:00) Lynne’s personal journey (26:18 / 21:10) Common Misconceptions (29:58 / 24:50) The problem with alarm clocks (33:08 / 28:00) Personalizing to your chronotype (41:08 / 36:00) Translation into treating patients (49:41 / 44:33) 3 keys to improve circadian hygiene (58:08 / 53:00) Also mentioned in this episode: The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms For more on Lynne, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Bon Charge, Ketone-IQ, and Lifeforce. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Right now, my friends at Ketone-IQ are offering 30% off your first subscription order & a free six-pack of Ketone-IQ when you order using the link ketone.com/dhru and promo code DHRU.  Right now, you can save $250 on your first diagnostic and get personalized suggestions. Optimize your longevity and track your progress; go to mylifeforce.com/dhru!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lynn, welcome to the podcast. We're here today to talk about a major problem, which is that our natural circadian rhythms are under attack. I'd love for you to expand on this a little bit more and also help our audience understand what's at stake if we don't take this problem seriously. This is a problem that's, it's a little more subtle than something like air pollution or water pollution, but it has profound effects on our bodies. So we evolved outdoors. We evolved with sun during the day, darkness at night. We evolved eating during the day, not at midnight. We evolved staying in more and less one place, not bouncing across time zones or flipping our clocks back and forth with daylight saving time. So by losing touch with those natural rhythms, we've thrown

off this this intricate, critically important symphony of clocks that are ticking throughout our body. Every single cell of your body has a clock. And these clocks tick in coordination to ensure that we do the right things at the right times. So if they get out of whack because we're spending 90% or more of our time indoors or we're, you know, messing up with all those things I mentioned that we evolved to have, then those things that we're supposed to be doing at the right times, the right things at the right times are no longer at the right times. And our body is not going to be happy with us. And we're going to be at a higher risk of chronic disease. We're going to be less productive during the day. If you're an athlete and your circadian rhythms are out of whack,

your performance may be at risk. We're now finding links between circadian disruption and quality and quantity of life. So a robust circadian rhythm might predict you're going to be healthier for longer. And you might be able to fend off dementia and other chronic health diseases that typically hit us in our later years. But we're now thinking that circadian rhythms, it's a chicken or egg issue, but circadian rhythms may well be one of those leading factors in developing those conditions. Well, I'd love to expand on that. And anytime you start talking about how circadian rhythms, when they're disruptive,

can cause people to overeat and maybe even contribute to weight gain, all of a sudden I feel like a bunch of people are paying attention. Let's share a little bit more about that with the audience. Yeah, the links with calorie consumption, so that's not even just food, but also beverages. so thinking about wine in the evening personally, we're finding that, yeah, the longer the period of time that you eat, and especially if you're eating late at night, like within three hours of bedtime, so not even that late,

that can severely increase your risk of obesity, diabetes, and not to mention lack of sleep. It's going to be harder for your body to want to sleep if it's digesting a big meal that you've thrown into your stomach. So it's fascinating that we're finding that the shorter that period of time that you eat during the day may fend off a lot of these issues. And some studies are finding, and mostly animal research so far is finding potential longevity benefits as well. Why has the topic of circadian rhythms and how they're disruptive? As much as research is out there, and for as long as that research,

research has been out there. Why is it such a huge blind spot in modern medicine? I believe that, again, it's just such a subtle thing. It's not something that's blatant that we can see. These are metaphorical microscopic clock sticking inside our bodies and all these things are happening behind the scenes. So I think that's a big part of it. I think that a lot of the science is relatively new. I mean, we only discovered what 20 years, ago that we have this third photoreceptor in the eye that is critical for picking up those cues from nature on when it is day and when it is night based on the wavelengths and intensity of light. So this is a relatively new science that's coming in. And then in 2017, the Nobel Prize was

awarded to scientists for their research on circadian rhythms. So that definitely gave it a little push that's propelled it a little more into the public conversation. It takes time, right? I mean, science is not not necessarily a sprinter. It takes time for these things to build and then for funding to be available and for research to collaborate and understand and make these connections that then indeed maybe this could be one of those really, really important factors when we're considering our overall health, both mental and physical. So give us some of that history of what did we know or what were some of the superstitions or

ideas that we did have before some of this new research about the human biological clock. And what were some of those key turning points? You mentioned a couple that we can expand on a little bit. But let's start off with a little bit of like a history lesson about this space that led to our lack of awareness well-intentioned around circadian rhythms. I think a lot of it stems from, and it's a common theme in a lot of science, that we think we've thought that humans are special, that we may not be the same as other creatures that evolved on this planet. So a lot of the science dates back centuries.

So one of the first reported, or the first reported measurement of a circadian rhythm was in a plant. And that kind of sat on the side for a while before some other researchers picked up the pieces and started looking around. And like, oh, yeah, it seems like a lot of life has rhythms. some scientists did more rigorous research looking at animals and found that it looked indeed like there was some intrinsic clocks ticking for those animals. They weren't just responding to light and dark per se, but that there was some aspect of them that was anticipating those changes in the environment so they could optimally live their lives.

And it wasn't until just a few decades ago there were a series of experiments in which humans put themselves into environments, which I kind of followed in their footsteps for my book, which we can get into later. But they put themselves into situations where they had no access to the environmental cues of day and night. And they measured various rhythms and found that, okay, it looks like humans too may indeed have these circadian clocks that were directing their bodies throughout the day. So I think it's, you know, it's been piecemeal. It's kind of like a few steps forward, one step back, because there was a time in which scientists were pretty sure about this.

You know, there was, you know, in hindsight, adequate evidence that humans had these intrinsic clocks. But again, the science takes a while to really propel into a new generation or a new thought pattern. So that idea of the third photoreceptor even when scientists first discovered that, there was pushback because what? You know, we know there's rods and cones. What's this third thing?

like, are you sure? So, you know, it took a while for that to get accepted. And, and bit by bit, we've, we've come so far that, you know, the Nobel Prize again was awarded for this science. That's a good sign. Yeah, some of these experiments that you talk about in inside of the book, which, by the way, is fantastic. We have linked to it in the show notes. It's called the Interclock, living in sync with our circadian rhythms. One of the experiments you talk about was this mammoth cave experiment. And I believe it was done in 1938. And it was a researcher, two researchers, Nathaniel and Bruce Richardson, I forgot Nathaniel's last name. Yeah, Claytman.

Yeah, Clayton. Can you talk a little bit about what they did and what we can learn about, you know, this sort of pretty drastic experiment that they undertook? Right. I'm trying to remember all the details. But if I recall correctly, they went down there and tried to live by a 28-hour day. So the idea was if they were, you know, they actually had clocks, but they were set to a longer day. And the idea was if they could stay on that clock, you know, the 28-hour day,

that would tell them something about what their inner clocks were doing. And it turned out that one of them was older and one was younger. And I believe it was the older researcher who had trouble sticking to that new time of 28 hours. His clocks were still, despite all the he was telling him 28 hours, his clocks were still talking at around 24 hours a day. And that was a key clue, although nobody really recognized it at the time, that was a key clue that, indeed, there's this intrinsic rhythm that has a beat that it wants to stick to. That is around 24 hours. And that's also a key point is the term circadian. That comes from circa about NDM day. So it's our clocks are never exactly 24 hours. Some of us shift or some of us have a little

longer of an inner day and some of us have a little shorter of an inner day that corresponds with whether you're an early bird or nine owl. And that's why kind of going back to the beginning, that's why it's so key that we get regular feedback from the environment, regular cues like light and dark to keep ourselves synced to the sun. You know, we're going to be zooming in. and zooming out throughout this podcast. So I want to take it back to the beginning where we said that our circadian rhythms are under attack in a way.

Now, sometimes that's intentional, but largely it's unintentional. It's modernity that has brought a lot of these disruptions to our life. What are some of the top things that are disrupting our circadian rhythms that we should all be aware of? The number one thing is a lack of light

during the day and too much light at night. So it's really about that contrast our bodies evolved with a lot of light during the day, darkness at night. And now in modern society, we spend, you know, more than 90% of our, on average, more than 90% of our time indoors. And that indoor light, it may look bright because, again, we have, so our rods and cones work a little differently than our third photo receptor that was discovered. Our visual perception is measuring or taking in light in a different way. it might look bright consciously to you, but it's not telling, it's not necessarily telling your circadian system that it's day. That system needs more light. And that's why our indoor environments based on the wavelengths of light that our lights give us and the intensity

are rarely enough to cue our body in that it's day. So that is a huge piece of it. In fact, that's probably more important that what we might hear more about is light at night, which is an issue too. Scientists are telling me, you know, it's not only so there's the intensity of the light at night, but also how much blue wavelengths are in that light because that blue is what is most telling to the circadian system that it's day because that's what midday sun

is sending us an extra burst of blue wavelengths. So at night, you know, having too many lights on indoors can also throw a wrench in that clockwork. So it's light and dark. And then also, I mean, society, we've, the way we've oriented our schedules, for example, I spoke to, you know, a lot of teachers and students and probably a lot of listeners might relate to this. Our school start times are really early for middle and high schoolers. Because they naturally, once you hit adolescence, your circadian rhythms naturally drift later.

So it's biology. Those bodies want to go to bed later and get up later. Yet that's when we start making them get up really early. There's a school district here outside of Seattle. The high school starts at 720. And, you know, those students are getting up probably like six to get there, right? And that is so against their biology. So I think that's another piece.

I think work times, that's, you know, it's highly variable. Modern society, we also follow daylight saving times. you know, most or a lot of countries do still. That's definitely up for debate here, as you've probably heard. And let's see, we also travel across time zones. You know, everybody knows the feeling of jet lag. That's perhaps the most obvious. Let's see.

Oh, and then eating. I mean, modern society is allowing us to order food, go to a restaurant, go to the refrigerator at midnight 2 a.m. and that's just not how our bodies evolved. You know, to summarize, you know, there's a whole list of things that you just mentioned. And the core of that is largely because we're indoors, we're not getting a lot of light during the day. The little light that we're getting during the day is passing through windows, which removes a whole bunch of spectrum of the wavelengths of light that our body is meant to get.

And then at night, we have all this artificial light around us, which has a blue spectrum, most of it. And that's just causing this hayward system where our body is like actually not sure what's going on. What are some of the examples of the things that get thrown off when our photoreceptor in our body and our supercosmatic nucleus? When they're receiving this incorrect information, what are the downstream consequences of this? in the body. So a couple of the key consequences. Perhaps the most obvious is our melatonin rhythm, which is that inducer of the whole sleep cycle. So it helps tell the body and to do all the things with all the other hormones to get the body ready for sleep. And once your clocks are out of sync, that message may not be sent at the right time. So your sleep's at risk. A major one is metabolism.

You know, there's so many components going into metabolism that if the liver and the kidney and the gut, if they're not in coordination and talking to each other in a healthy way where things are time to do the right things at the right times again, then that can get out of whack. And that is why some of these studies are finding links to obesity with diabetes and other health conditions. our mental health, our ability, our cognitive functions, that is very circadian. And if our circadian rhythms get out of sync, we may not be able to hit that peak of cognitive function at the right time during the day when we're trying to get something done or we're giving a speech or taking an exam. When you think about, again, those high school students given exams first period in the morning, that's, you know, it's not optimal.

They're not going to be performing at their best. We're going to get into your personal story here in a minute, but when you hear about these things, they can seem like soft issues in our life, but they actually have major real world consequences. We right now are dealing with, especially in the West, in North America, increasingly as we export our lifestyle around the world, other countries too, we're dealing with this epidemic of chronic disease. Tell us what we know about all-cause mortality and some of the risk of chronic diseases that are increased, specifically, hard disease, obesity, cancer, because our circadian rhythms are so disrupted? It's hard to tease out just how much circadian rhythm disruption is

influencing all those. But we can say scientists seem pretty confident to say, you know, there's a link. The cancer piece aspects of it are heavily debated, but, you know, there's been studies linking even just light pollution, but we know light pollution affects our circadian rhythms, right? So shift work, which is affecting our circadian rhythms, that's being linked to some cancers. And cardiovascular disease, there's certainly studies that link that too with disrupted circadian cycles. So, you know, the extent of the contribution is still up for study, but it's clear that it's a component. And I think there are, because there's so many relatively low-hanging fruits here that people can do individually and then we could do as a society to remedy a lot of

this problem. It just, it seems silly that we would continue to overlook it. There's also a couple other areas that you wouldn't necessarily make the immediate connection, especially if you're new to this conversation, which some listeners might be. And I'd love you to tease apart what we know or what the research community knows, but that would be the topic of mental health, you know, mental health issues on the rise, and it's multifaceted. There's a lot of things that play into it. But where does this idea of circadian rhythms? Where does that play into it? It plays in at a few levels. So we know from research on mental health conditions like schizophrenia, manic depressive disorder, that there is a key circadian component. And it's one of those, again, kind of chicken

or egg things. I talked to one scientist who, that's his main area of focus. and he's found that there's definitely a discrepancy in the length of what we call the period of somebody's circadian clock, and that's kind of, again, how long the inner day is for that person. There's differences between how patients respond to certain depression medications based on the length of their inner clock. So there is a lot of, I mean, that, you know, we can take that both ways. is like, what does that say about the condition and the role of circadian rhythms affecting that condition? And also, on a positive note, what can we do with that knowledge to affect or to kind of prescribe drugs and think about how we're treating these patients? Also, it points to, okay, maybe a really easy treatment is to help their circadian rhythms by getting more light during the day and darkness of night.

And as it was also pointed out to me, a lot of these things are sort of vicious cycles. So if you're depressed, what are the chances that you're up first thing in the morning and outside getting that morning light? A lot of people when they're mentally ill, you know, might be more coistered inside. And then they're seeing darkness all day. They're not getting that contrast. They get sicker. And so there's factors going in both directions here. So I think with mental health, it's, you know, the sky's the limit.

There's a lot of opportunity here to think. about treatments, risk factors, and then there's the whole component of timing the medication across the 24-hour day. So I have a chapter on circadian medicine and that is also a potential application here. What time during the day do you give that treatment for optimal effect? Back to the, back to kids, teenagers, there's links between school start times and mental health suicide risk. You know, again, if you think about all the ways in which modern society is wrecking our rhythms. That also comes into play when we're thinking about mental health.

And then long term, as we get older, you know, risk for dementia, Alzheimer's goes up. And we see links. We see links between if you have cataracts, your ability to get the blue wavelengths of light from the sun goes substantially down. And it also just naturally goes down as you get older. So thinking about that in cataract surgery, and upping the intensity of blue light for these people, especially if you're thinking about nursing homes or assistant living facilities, that can have significant benefits for these patients and trying to keep the circadian rhythm healthy.

But it looks like, you know, there's links here between circadian rhythms and long-term mental health, cognitive function, just teasing out, you know, which direction these causes go. we, you know, it's not fully clear yet, but there's, there's certainly links that are pretty obvious to the researchers I spoke with. I want to talk a little bit about your personal story and origin story as it's related to this topic. You chat a little bit about it in the book. You talk about both like your life growing up and how you were living the life that a lot of other kids and students and people were living. I'd love for you to expand on that a little bit more. And then also, if you could weave in the story of the opening of the book, of being fascinated by, um,

the topic of circadian rhythms and sending a lamp to one of your friends who was going on an expedition. Yeah. All right. We'll take it back. So, yeah, I mean, I think not consciously, of course, but I've been ticking my clocks off my whole life. I, you know, I grew up in Seattle where it gets pretty dark in the winter. It has a reputation for a reason. And the days, given our latitude, are pretty short in the winter.

So I didn't think that much of it. But I definitely, I was, you know, my mood swung throughout the year. And during the school year, the late fall, winter, the sun wouldn't rise to well after I was in class, you know, drive to school in the dark. I'd go to maybe basketball practice after school. By the time I left the gym, it was dark. Classrooms weren't necessarily all that bright. You know, I didn't see a lot of light. I felt sluggish a lot of the time.

And then I went to Minnesota for college, which people thought was a odd choice. It's brutally cold there. But the winter that's there were so bright. I mean, you'd have blue sky. You'd have snow reflecting the sun. And I remember in the winters just, you know, being happier and calculus finally made sense. I didn't do so great in calculus in high school. You know, who knows?

There's lots of factors, sure. But I noticed that. And then, you know, many years later, I was spent time on the East Coast and then I moved back to Seattle. and I was now a journalist. I remember getting an email from a PR person inviting me to Safeco Field, which I'm a lifelong Seattle Mariners fan. That's what the stadium used to be called. And I was going to see the new LED lights that they had installed. So of course I'm going to take that opportunity.

And I went, checked out the stadium lights. But then I also, the tour took us into the locker room for the Seattle Mariners, where they had just installed these like crazy new lights. lights where they could adjust the color as well as the intensity of the lights in the locker room. And the tour guide was telling us how this was supposed to energize the players before the games and relaxed them after so they could sleep and help their circadian rhythms. And that just sent me down the whole like rabbit hole of what is what's this about? I became fascinated. And yeah, I ended up, you know, writing a couple stories about circadian lighting and circadian

medicine. And then to your point about, yeah, it was, this was a few years ago now, but a friend of a friend commanded an icebreaker for the Coast Guard. And they were headed north where it was going to be just dark 24 hours a day. And I wondered, you know, see if a little sunlamp might help him. He talked about how he would just be dragging, you know, on these trips. And, and sure enough, he, yeah, he set it up on his desk and used it and anecdotal and of one. But he said that as soon as he started using that on the trip, like his sleep got better. He was able to think more clearly, be more alert during the day. So I was fun, fun to hear.

And that just kind of kept me, kept me going down this crazy path. It's happening slowly, but more people are starting to realize this topic is actually very important. For the folks that are not as familiar with it, what are still some of the biggest misconceptions you see when it comes to all things circadian rhythm, getting sunlight, avoiding sunlight at night? Are there any top misconceptions you still see floating out there? Maybe the media is sort of propagating it. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding, superstitions. What are some of those top ones that are still floating out there in the world? The first thing that comes to mind is when people hear that, you know, I was writing,

a book on circadian rhythms, the first thing they'd talk to me about is our sleep. And yes, circadian rhythms are certainly behind our sleep. But that is just one of, you know, such a wide range of body functions of health issues that circadian rhythms touch. So I think one thing that may not be widely understood yet is just the breadth of the role circadian rhythms play in our lives. The other thing, well, there's a couple things that also come up that I, you know, I try to spread the word on as much as I can because I think these are, you know, pretty easy things to implement. A lot of people use melatonin for sleep. And it was towards the end of my research that I was talking to a scientist and he, I mean, he blew my mind because I don't use it that much, but I would

occasionally, you know, take, take a couple milligrams before bed to try to fall asleep if I had been having trouble. And sometimes it would work, but like I felt like, yeah, my insomnia would almost get worse or continue. And as he explained to me, if you take melatonin right before bed, you could be making your problem worse. The ideal timing of melatonin is really when your natural melatonin is starting to uptick in your body, that your body is starting to pump out that melatonin to get you ready for bed, ready to fall asleep. And that's like two, three hours before bed, before you're, you know, you're consistent with when you go to bed. It's about two, three hours before you go to sleep.

So by taking it later, you're telling your body, okay, now is when we're starting to like uptick that melatonin and beds, you know, bedtime's a little ways off. And that can throw you off for the next day and the next day. So smaller doses earlier is something I, I don't know that has gotten out there that much. There's been a little attention to that, but very little. You know, there seems to be this vicious cycle. Even though this topic is much bigger than sleep because you brought up sleep that's there,

people have super disrupted sleep there's a lot of light exposure from devices TVs indoor light they're taking melatonin way too late if they end up using it and they don't sleep as well and largely as a society because we have access to light we're up later than the natural times that we sort of fall asleep after the sun sets so then because we live in this modern world and we have jobs and kids to drop off at school, etc. A lot of us rely on alarm clocks. Talk about the challenges.

It's a double-edged sword because a lot of people wouldn't wake up with an alarm clock. What's the problem with alarm clocks? The fact that you use an alarm clock or wake up to that awful beeping sound, that's a signal right there that you're not living according to your circadian rhythms. I mean,

practically speaking, a lot of us kind of need them. But in the ideal world, we would all be waking up naturally when our body is ready to wake up. And by using an alarm clock, yeah, you're throwing that off. You're waking up. Obviously, if it's beeping and you're still asleep, you're still asleep, you're waking up too early. And I spoke with a lot of scientists who are like, yeah, we should, you know, we need to get rid of alarm clocks. We need to live without alarm clocks.

I'm just going to throw this in there because I thought this was so entertaining. Because you mentioned, you know, we kind of need them to wake up to get to work on time. And before we had the modern alarm clock or the alarm clock on our iPhone, there were actually human alarm clocks that would wander the streets. So this was, most of the stories were based in London or in England. But there would be what were called knocker ups that would go around blowing dried peas at windows of clients and you know ping, ping, ping, time to wake up.

And that was, yeah, it was how people got up in time to go to work at the factory. They would, they would hire these people to knock them up. You know, it was a little amusing. That's funny. But yeah, now scientists are like, we, you know, to the extent possible,

if we can rise without an alarm clock, our bodies would be healthier. We'd be more productive at work, which also leads me to the next point is how do we, you know, how do we get there? How do we, at least for, you know, those of us, it's possible to throw away the alarm clock, what do we need to do? And that's, you know, on top of maybe delaying school start times. Also, be more flexible with working hours for jobs that would allow that.

Because it's a win-win. I mean, employers would get more out of their workers if they weren't sleep deprived and circadian disrupted. And they could also ensure their workers are working at the prime times for their cognitive function because that is also on a circadian rhythm, right? I learned through the process of writing this book that I am most productive in the late morning. You know, so there's certain hours of the day that employees are most productive.

So people could figure that out for themselves, ensure they have adequate privacy or whatever to get work done during those hours. And maybe that's earlier or later the day for different people. So I think there's a huge message here for employers to employ this new science, maybe let workers come in whenever they wake up without their alarm clock and and let them, yeah, work at the hours most optimal for them. And that could be helped by maybe as, you know, having meetings in the middle of the day. So those that start later can make it, And those that start earlier could also make it if you center around that meeting time. You know, I think that one of the things that's super unsexy, but as a huge part of this, is, you know,

we have all gotten used to as a society sleeping a lot later than how our bodies are naturally designed. And I know that my life and my wife's health radically changed when we started saying, all right, eight o'clock, we're going to start dimming the lights in the house. And especially in the bedroom, we have these orange light bulbs that are popular. Some people use them. Or if we're in the main living room, there's still some ambient light from the lamps. We'll put on like blue light blockers. And we start to sort of let our nervous system and our circadian rhythms start to ease into the idea of falling asleep.

Now, I'm always honest with my audience. I don't have kids yet. That is in the future. but, you know, who knows how this will shift. But at least for right now, the discipline that we said is like, all right, eight o'clock, we're starting to sort of wind down. 9.30 latest, we're already in bed. Some days when we have a really tough day, we're in bed, maybe reading or chatting with

each other at 9 o'clock, and we try to fall asleep by 10. And we're pretty consistent with that timing. And even sometimes there's days where it feels like 10 is quite late for us as we've started to shift our circadian rhythm. So it's not always, although it is trending now with people wearing aura rings and whoop devices, which we'll chat about in a second. The competition of trying to get a really good sleep score is that sexy. But sleeping earlier is, you know, one of the biggest hacks that people could have, even though it takes a lot of shifts in our lifestyle. What time were you going to bed before you and your wife made these changes? Well, before living in

L.A. I lived in New York. And I would say that being in New York City, between the noise and late nights and just the drinking culture of, you know, the city, it wouldn't be uncommon that I wouldn't start winding down until 11. When I moved to L.A., it started shifting naturally. And I've been living this lifestyle. And I've been friends with a lot of leaders and pioneers into this space for quite some time. But I would say regularly my wife would go to bed at midnight, you know, 1130 midnight, which, you know, you can get away with some of those things when you're younger, but as you start to age, it all starts to catch up with you. Exactly. That kind of takes us back to the mem of the cave because that the older gentleman had a harder time. Yeah, Justinius clocked

that 28 hour day. I mean, we're, yeah, we're less flexible as we get older. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think on average, we all could go to bed earlier and get up earlier. And it's hard to really know your body can do that until you do it. And again, you would implement the things that you and your wife did. Because light has multiple effects on our physiology. So I mean, we have the vision that everybody thinks about. There are the circadian rhythm influences from light. But then there's also the energizing, directly energizing effect of light. So you're, you might be sitting in your apartment at eight o'clock at night. Your circadian rhythm might be ready to start. you know, ramping up, pumping the melatonin, getting you ready for bed. But if you have bright lights on,

that's not only potentially affecting your circadian rhythm, but it's also directly energizing you, which, you know, tells the brain, let's keep going, right? So it could be kind of blurred. It could be hard for you to tell that maybe I'm not necessarily a night owl. Maybe I could actually go to bed earlier and get up earlier. But there are also true night owls. There are people whose genes program them to live at different hours. And for them, yeah, maybe not. Maybe that's not necessarily going to be better for them. But everybody can experiment with, you know, if you actually have a decent vacation where you don't have to sit an alarm and get up, you could see when, you know, try these things with lights, dim things at night, wear blue blockers, see.

when your body like naturally gets sleepy, you know, like take that cue, go to bed, get up when your body naturally gets up, try to do that for a few days and see what time are these things happening. And then, you know, not everybody has the luxury of this opportunity, but see then if you can try to schedule your life around those hours. You know, of course, there's parents, there's workplaces that are not going to be flexible yet. But if everybody can kind of think about that, do their own little experiments. I think that's information that you can really implement. You mentioned earlier in the conversation about personalizing sort of how you can fall into different buckets when it comes to your circadian rhythm. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

And how can our audience, you know, go down that pathway if they wanted to see, are they naturally a night owl? Are they naturally more this way, that way? Like what information is available to folks? Absolutely. So kind of like I described, it's, it's, well, let's back up. So chronotype. That is the, you know, scientific term for what your interclocks are doing. And most of us think about early birds or morning larks and night owls. Well, that's just two of and really an infinite number of buckets, right? It's a continuous variable. All of us have different natural circadian rhythms. It could be, some could be longer or shorter than 24 hours. Some of our bodies respond differently to light. So the impact of light on that rhythm can be different. So we're all different, you know, in any ways, but this is just one of them. And if you can, yeah, take a step back, go on vacation and just really see without any influence of other people or alarm clocks,

what your body wants to do on a day-night basis. then you can get an idea. And if you look, let's say you've, on those vacation days, you fall asleep at 10, you know, you get up at 6. So you got great at eight hours of sleep. That's what your body then wants. And then if you take the midpoint of that, some scientists have created kind of some charts looking at wherever your midpoint of sleep is, where it falls on the bell curve will

tell you if you are a morning lark or a dove, which is kind of what. a broad category for those of us in the middle or a night owl. And there's, you know, a lot more categories because it's because we're all different. But if we want to try to bucket them like we do shoe sizes. I don't know if you're on TikTok or playing around with it, but even if you're on Instagram, you know, one of the most trending and also sort of controversial areas that overlaps with the space is that there are a lot of skin experts, dermatologists, that are sounding the alarm about the dangers of the sun.

And along with that, there are a whole group of people that are taking that and having sort of complete sun phobia and avoiding the sun at all cost. And I'd love for you to chime in on that, you know, from, I don't think it's something that you wrote about in the book, but just would love to get your perspective on anybody that's out there that's listening today that is sort of having that focus. and the fear of, you know, any sun exposure, you know, hyper aging them. And so they need to avoid it and do everything they can to try to look as good as they can. Right.

So, yeah, I can't claim to be a dermatologist or know a ton about skin health. But I will share what I learned and what might be relevant here. And the first is that when you think about like being out in the sun and hiding from it, we also need to be thinking about our eyes. So that third photoreceptor in our eyes that our circading system relies on to tell day and night, if we are going around with sunglasses on all day or prescription lenses with a blue light filtering film on, which a lot of glasses now have, even some contacts, then we are depriving our circadian system of that information. That's critical information. So I think that is one key here that people need to keep in mind.

I mean, I don't. I used to wear my sunglasses like all the time when I was outside. And now if I'm going for a morning walk, I will probably skip them, especially in the winter. The winter, those photons are so hard to come by. So I'll try to avoid wearing sunglasses. Other piece here and some really exciting and new research, but very early state. about our skin clocks. So, you know, we have a quote-unquote master circadian clock in the brain,

which is kind of the conductor of the symphony of clocks throughout our body. But it's not always in charge. There's also other clocks can kind of play solos. And skin clocks, we're finding, could take cues directly from the sun rather than necessarily listen to the brain clock. And that could, and research, are linking that with a variety of things and like how the skin responds to light, how when it sets up protection, when it takes that light in, which we're now finding, I mean, you go down

the rabbit hole of red light therapy or near infrared light. There's all kinds of things, violet light, all kinds of things that we're finding may affect our ability to heal, our metabolism. And, you know, time will tell what what the science leads us to. But it's, there's potential there that there's things we just don't know yet of the benefits of getting direct light. That said, I think sunscreen definitely has its place. We shouldn't be overdoing it, you know, and I'm no dermatologist. So we speak to that. Yeah.

Thank you for that. I think the other thing that many different experts that have come on our podcast stressed individuals is that if you are truly worried about damage from the sun, which is a whole topic, you know, there could be, there's many debates on it and sources and how dietary oils play into it and toxins. And yes, the sun does, can damage your skin with a lot of exposure. There's a recognition that morning sunlight and evening sunlight is some of the safest sunlight that's out there. The UV index is so low and we all have smartphones. And if you go to your weather app on the smartphone, you can look at your local town or city and you can see what the UV index is. And generally

speaking, when the sun rises for the first few hours in the morning, you're at a UV index under three, which is generally regarded as safe. And you can get your sun exposure, both in the morning and the evening, and not have to fear so much about damage. It's actually my favorite thing to do is to work out outside early in the morning and to get that sun exposure. And I notice a massive difference, not just from working out, but also just being outside in the sun. So that's a happy medium for anybody who's really afraid of the sun and is trying to do their best to protect their skin, get that morning and evening sunlight where the UV index is really low. You're going to be in a good place. Spot on. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I just want to add there, again,

very new research. We don't know much yet. But the light in the morning and the evening, like those changing colors and hues in the sky, those might have other, you know, direct and indirect effects on our body that are important. you know, wait, just wait for it. Maybe in maybe in a year I'll be able to say more on that. But scientists are on the verge of something. I think it's kind of cool there too. And I also want to add on the sunscreen bit and the skin and the skin clock.

One point that a scientist made to me is the consideration if you're traveling, so if you're coming from New York or something traveling to Hawaii, say, for a vacation, If you land in the morning and then, you know, go out onto the beach to bask in the rays in the afternoon, you have to be extra careful. Because naturally your skin is going to have its protective barrier up during the day. And then it's going to take it down at night as it repairs itself. So if you're arriving, you're, you know, your circadian rhythms haven't cut up yet to the new time zone. Your protective barrier may be down and you might be way more prone to getting skin damage. So there's a definite time in place for sunscreen there.

Part of what you explored in the book is what's to come as we start to really weave this circadian science into all aspects of how patients and individuals are treated in modern medicine moving forward. And there's a whole section inside of the book where you go into circadian medicine. What were some of the most fascinating things that you learned about items and ways of treating people that are on the precipice or that are emerging that. could change the future of how people get treated here in America and then hopefully the rest of the world. Yeah, this is one of the most exciting aspects of circadian rhythm research right now, I think, is this translation of it into medicine and clinical practice, which is, yeah, barely begun. There's lots of potential here. I spoke with this one researcher in Europe who had been studying cancer metastases,

and she had a lab of research animals. mice and they were also working with a hospital. And she was telling me how she was baffled. Like they would take blood samples from the mice and blood samples from these women with breast cancer. And the mice were whatever they had to do to them, sadly to give them breast cancer too. But they're looking at the blood of both of these and they're finding way more circulating tumor cells in the mice than in the women.

And they're like, why is this? This is bizarre. And then it occurred to her that mice, they sleep during the day and they're awake at night. No, their circuiting rhythms are flipped from us. And they were taking all these samples during the day. So the mice were sleeping, the women were up. So she was curious. So she decided to stay up all night herself and take samples from the mice.

And she found an 88-fold difference in the number of circulating cancer cells in the mice, across the day. So at sometimes, yeah, it was 88 times as many circulating cancer cells. And so then they took that knowledge, they applied it with the women and looked at differences across the day. And sure enough, it seemed that the tumor cells were more prone to be circulating while the mouse or the woman was sleeping. So the implications there is one is not that a cancer patient shouldn't sleep because sleep is critical for healing and fighting anything bad in the body. But what does this tell us about maybe the timing of a biopsy or the timing of a treatment? Lots of potential here. You know, we're not yet to that stage. But we're finding this over and over, and it's often serendipitously

because medical students aren't trained on these differences across time of day for body functions and medicine and what time might be best for a surgery or taking low-dose aspirin for blood pressure, it's not at all part of the clinical training. So I think it's, we're really at a precipice here of pushing this more mainstream, again, more funding, more research, and then having enough clinicians understanding this to begin to implement it, begin to tell their patients about these differences. And there's, you know, there's other obstacles. Like there's the whole point of, you know, a chemotherapy unit, right?

They're not, there's only so many chairs at a certain time. So you're not going to be able to treat everyone at the same time. But if we, if we have this knowledge and as technology evolves, like we have, we now have pumps. You know, we have insulin pumps for diabetes patients. We also have the ability to pump chemotherapy at any hour for a lot of patients. So things like that technology paired with the circadian science is opening up a whole host of opportunities to implement this on a, you know, it's another dimension of personalized medicine. If we can time treatments when they might be most effective and also have at least side effects and that often is going together based on some of the early studies that have come out. I love that.

And I think that there's also the knowledge component is that largely, you know, we're all thankful for modern medicine and these. different interventions. We've all had family members and maybe even some of us that have needed them at different stages. And largely what we're talking about are downstream impacts that are there with what we know about circadian rhythms. What would it look like if on literally a governmental level things were subsidized for people to get sleep trackers? if they, you know, other things that also encouraged activity level throughout, throughout the day. And what happens when from the time you're young, literally, you know, we've had Dr. Suchand on the podcast previously talking about how much it breaks is hard to see these premature babies

in the Nick You who are exposed to 24-hour bright light and the damage that it does to their immune system, their gut, their other stuff, what would happen if we had awareness at hospitals that, you know, these babies are so sensitive and their circadian rhythms are just being formed and their immune systems, which are so crucial at that time, are severely impacted by these things. So what happens when we start to really have a nationwide focus, the same way that we would talk about avoiding cigarettes and having the restrictions on them of doubling down on these lifestyle things that, you know, maybe we would see a little dip in some of these chronic diseases that are obviously so multifaceted. They're not just about circadian rhythms. They're about so many

aspects of life being sedentary, not having access to healthy food, et cetera, et cetera. But once you really start to understand this and the implications inside your book, you realize that there are low-cost measures that if they were simply encouraged, incentivized, we could really start to make a dent in the health and disease that many people are facing. Absolutely. I mean, you bring up the NICU. And I mean, there's research showing that if you use cycled lighting and don't just have the babies under full blast light or full blast dark 24 hours a day, that they leave

the hospital earlier. And we find this, you know, take that forward to like any, any hospital stay. Somebody has a window, for example. There's research showing that they're going to be in the hospital less time. That's a lot less money spent, right? So I think there are so many incentives that need to be highlighted for hospitals and, I mean, countless other institutions that I research for the book to implement some of these relatively low-cost things to save money in the long term.

And there was a NICU that I visited in Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children's Hospital. They had just constructed this new NICU unit. So they used to have babies under relatively Dentalite most of the time. now they have circadian lighting in the NICU. So during the day, the babies are getting something that mimics really close to natural light. So a higher intensity, more blue wavewinks. And then, you know, at night it dims. And it's more of that warm orange hue.

So, you know, this is both the baby and the parents there and the nursing stuff and the doctors at all getting the benefit of this more circadian tuned lighting. And that's the idea. It's like, well, this help those babies who were cut off prematurely from the mom who was basically feeding the baby on many things, but circadian cues. So a woman, you know, light actually filters into the womb, a mom's eating cycles, all kinds of her own, her own rhythms are informing the baby of the time of day. And then it's, you know, it's out early. It's not getting those cues at a really important time when brain development, and their own circadian rhythms are developing. So they're hoping that this lighting will help re-infuse that baby to have some of those

critical cues. Well, while we wait for even more research to show us, you know, all the different ways that our inner clock plays a role in our health and our society's health, there's so many things that we can do based on what's known right now. You've already mentioned a bunch, but I always like to end episodes by recapping a little bit and making sure that people feel hopeful and that they realize that there's a lot of agency and autonomy that they have to make a significant difference in their health on the topic that we're covering. So if you wouldn't mind, just recap some of the things

that we can all be doing to protect our circadian rhythms. And if you want to make it personalize it all by highlighting some of the ones that you've incorporated in, you know, any kind of interesting or unique ways to personalize it for you. I'm sure the audience would appreciate that as well. Sure. I guess I would summarize it to, you know, three, three key things that you could do implement right away to improve your circadian hygiene or circadian rhythms. And the first, I've talked about a fair bit, but it is that contrast, right? It's those bright days and dark nights. So that could be, you know, as soon as you get up in the morning, follow your lead, drew and get outside, you know, get a little bit of morning light, even if it's just like 15, 20 minutes,

that can make a big difference. And then spend as much of the daytime, you know, close to a window or taking breaks outside to continue to feed that critical light cue to the master clock and the brain. And then at night, dim your lights. And I, yeah, in reporting this book, I have taken up, So my friends think this is somewhat silly, but bear with me. I've got a bunch of these candles that I've set up around my apartment. And now with a remote, I don't have the remote here. Come on. Yeah.

And there we go. And if those who are listening, that they're electric candles. Yes, electric candles, right. And, you know, I can click them on with a remote. And it's just really cozy. So I'll turn those on. I have like, I have a strip of LED lights under like the countertops in my, my kitchen. But I basically have the candles and that.

And it's plenty, plenty of light to see. It's amazing how quickly your eye adjusts. You know, I had one scientist recommend just doing an experiment and, you know, try and turning the lights down just a little bit and a little more and a little more. And the surprise of like, oh, I don't really need that much light. I can see plenty. I'm not going to trip and fall. I can even read.

So anyway, that's what I have incorporated. And of course, I am fortunate to have a big picture window by my desk. So I'm getting light during the day. However, before I was able to actually measure my light exposure, I had this desk in front of me here pushed up against the window. So yeah, for your listeners who can't see me, I got a big picture of a window on my right and I'm in front of my desk, but I was basically at the edge of that window.

So I wasn't really getting enough light directly into the eye. So it was kind of on the side of my head. So I have sense pulled back. I'm getting more light in through the window. And yeah, so I mean, that's how I've increased my contrast. But I think there's little things you can do to really up that difference throughout the day. Second thing is constrict. So constrict the hours of the day that you eat.

And that's, again, consuming even a potato chip or a sip of wine. So maybe wait an hour or so after you get up and then try the most important piece is to try to stop taking. in any calories a few hours before bed. So that's the second thing. I've tried to incorporate that. I mean, I guess it's similar to the alarm clock idea. It's that, you know, the real world practical things come up. And having a social life is important.

So if it's a girl's night, you know, I'm going to bend my rules a little bit. But I find that if I follow that, I sleep way better. Finally, consistency. So sleeping, eating, exercising at the same hours every day really helps the robustness of your circadian rhythms. And that's, you know, that's tough. We've talked about alarm clocks. We've talked about school start times.

These are ways in which society, you know, imposes these schedules that make that difficult. So, of course, like a teenager or a lot of us will sleep in on the weekend to make up for a lost sleep during the week. And, you know, it's a balance. like we need to do as much as we can to get as much sleep as possible. So it's okay to a point, but we really need consistency for our circading rhythms to stay in sync. So that's another term that comes up called social jet lag, which is the difference in the time that you're sleeping on the weekdays or your working days and the weekends.

And you want to limit that, ideally. You know, a huge and important piece that everybody on this podcast would agree. with is that we need, if we're really going to scale these solutions, especially when it comes to helping people protect their circadian rhythm, we have to think about everyone involved. And especially on the lower end of the economic spectrum and when it comes to making things equitable for people, which largely starts first by educating the larger audience who can actually control these things and make a difference for these individuals, a huge part of the conversation is that they, are being impacted often the most when it comes to a disrupted circadian rhythm.

Can you talk about that, the implications of it, and then any suggestions that you have of how we can pay attention to this topic to make these solutions more equitable to people? Right. There are certain segments of our population that are just more prone to dim days and bright nights. So you think about vulnerable populations that are probably more likely to live in that basement apartment and they're probably maybe not going to have that corner office with windows. They might be in the back of the house, in a kitchen, in a call center, a warehouse. They're not getting daylight during the day.

And then at night, they're coming home and, you know, a lot of these people, you know, especially if they live inner city, might be subjected to, you know, bright streetlights. If they're on a lower floor, they're going to have, you know, the building lights and headlights and in low-income areas, I witness myself. You know, they'll put up big floodlights to, you know, protect the neighborhood. And these lights are often trespassing inside their bedrooms. So they're not only, and the fact is, the lack of light during the day makes you more susceptible to the effects of light at night. So they're getting it from both ends. and you know, and this is a population that is more likely to work shift schedules.

And, you know, that's also very circadian disruptive. So I think as a society, I mean, this is, they're struggling with a lot of things, right? There's a lot of disadvantages that certain populations have. But this is one that I think is there and it's been pretty invisible. Kind of once you see it, it's hard not to see it. I mean, now I walk around cities and it's pretty apparent. But I think just that knowledge, and then I think there probably at some point needs to be some kind of regulation around this to really help. Because at this point, it's really the wealthy that can afford a lighting designer and to get that home with a lot of windows.

So standards as far as, you know, the bare minimum of windows and daylighting that a building needs, that's going to be an important move to get a little more equity there. And then light at night, more regulations or guidelines or awareness that do we really need these lasting bright LED lights that are shining everywhere. You know, can we control where they shine and make sure it's only really where it's needed and not necessarily into the neighbor's bedroom window. No, it's a super important topic. And like a lot of things, even indoor plumbing, which was very rare and initially only for the well off, you know, it's a super important topic.

education that starts to shift things, which is where I see your book playing a huge role. And we have to make people that have resources that can pull different levers in government, in research, in, you know, school districts, whatever it might be, building, you know, city planners, we have to get them more aware of first. How is this impacting not only their own health, but of course their community's health too? Absolutely. And you spoke of education. And I think that is also one glaring illustration of this is just there's classrooms and probably more in certain neighborhoods that don't have windows.

This is where we're teaching our children. And there are studies that show a lack of daylight, lack of lights actually reducing their performance as well as their physical and mental health. Fantastic. All great suggestions. And there's plenty more that are inside the book. We have the link in the show notes, the inner clock. living in sync with our circadian rhythms. It's a fantastic read.

Highly recommend everybody check it out. Lynn, this has been fantastic to have you on the episode, to break down this important topic that is getting more attention, but not enough attention. There's so many little tiny behavioral changes that people can do. My wife is the first one to vouch for me on this.

I've mentioned it many times before. You know, your life can radically change and your health can radically change when you really dial in your circadian rhythm. And we so appreciate you dedicating your work to this topic and also giving us your time today to explore this important information on today's episode. How can our audience keep in touch with you from this podcast moving forward? Yeah, you can find me at Lynnpeoples.com. I have links there also to my book page with Penguin Random House.

Yeah, I really enjoyed this, Drew. Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, congratulations on the book. I hope it continues on this journey of incredible writers, research, and people trying to highlight this topic and raise awareness. I know it definitely will. And again, thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast. Thank you, Drew. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the way.

world to me, and it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition, to mindset, to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step

protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This, or just go to Drew Perot.com, that's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T-com, and click on the tab that says, try this.