Instant Genius - How to Hack Your Sleep: Optimising your body clock

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Our bodies have in-built clocks that allow us to sync our daily activities to a roughly 24-hour cycle. This determines everything from our sleep patterns to our appetites and even dictates the time of day we are most likely to perform at our best. However, not all of our body clocks keep the same time – some of us prefer early mornings while some of us prefer late nights. What’s more, alterations in external time, such as crossing time zones or changes to and from daylight saving time can play havoc with this finely tuned internal system. In this episode, we catch up with Dr Beatriz Bano, a neuroscientist based at the University of Manchester. She tells us the role exposure to daylight plays in setting our body clocks, how they change over our lifetimes and how we can set up our daily routines to ensure we are well rested and performing at our best. This episode is presented in partnership with Lumie. https://www.lumie.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason. Goodier, commissioning editor, the BBC Science Focus. Our bodies have inbuilt clocks that allow us to sink our daily activities to a roughly 24-hour cycle. This determines everything from our sleep patterns to our appetites, and even dictates the time of day we're most likely to perform at our best. However, not all of our body clocks keep the same time. Some of us prefer early mornings, or some of us prefer late nights. What's more, alterations in external time, such as crossing time zones, changes to and from daylight saving time can play havoc with this finely tuned internal system. In this episode, we catch up with Dr. Beatrice Bano, a neuroscientist based at the University of

Manchester. She tells us the role exposure to daylight plays in setting our body clocks, how they change over our lifetimes, and how we can set up our daily routines to ensure we're well-rested and performing at our best. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thank you. Hello. So today we're talking about circadian rhythms and body clocks and things like this. So the best place to start then is what is the circadian rhythm, you know, and what happens in our bodies during the daily cycle? So circadian rhythms referred to the variation that happens in our body functions approximately every 24 hours. And indeed, this is what the word circadian stands for.

So it comes from Latin circa, which means close to, and the end. day. So it's all those daily variations that happen in our physiology and behavior that repeats every 24 hours. And the first thing that will come to our minds will be probably our daily sleep wake cycles. Basically, circadian rhythms pervade many, many other aspects of our daily lives from the time that we might be better at do a particular task, what time we should be eating, body temperature rhythms, so just name it. So a really important aspect of our lives. So what sort of external factors can affect our circadian rhythm? So the main one is light. So the environmental light is one of the key elements that can adjust the timings of our clocks. And the way

that that operates is we have in our brains, what we call a central clock. So this is like our internal timekeeping system. So it's a cell population neurons that they will intrinsically endogenously, they are able to tick, they are able to track time. But in order to be able to predict and anticipate to daily rhythms of what happened in the environment, they need to get synchronized to those signals. And what better than use light, which is a really reliable signal, so life on Earth, as a consequence like the Earth rotation, we experience these daily changes in light and dark. So it is not surprising that one of the main signal that our clock uses to adjust time is environmental light. So like some people are, as they say, night owls, some people are early birds or larks, something called a chronotype.

So, you know, how does that affect circadian rhythms? So the idea of the chronotypes is related with our temporal preferences. So basically we have the morning or early types, so they larks. So these are people that like tends to wake up early and like go to bed earlier. And then we have in the other side of the spectrum, people that are like the late type owls. So these are people that go to bed like much later and wake up much later. And what is interesting about like this range of chronotypes is that part of that could be due to genetic traits. So there will be people that their clock sticks faster intrinsically.

So for those people, like the days are like almost like if they were shorter. So they will be related with early types. Whereas for other people genetically, they might be more prone to be late chronotypes. But that's not the only thing. Chronotype could also be affected by environmental factors. And here, for example, comes our lifestyle. So take for example light exposure. So we have just talked about that light exposure can adjust or help to adjust the time of our clocks.

And the way that it does that is, for example, light exposure at the end of a day, or like early even in hours, it can delay our clocks. So it will effectively make us to go to bed later and also wake up later the day after. So you could think into a situation in which a person genetically is supposed to be a lay chronotype, but that makes that person more likely to be exposed to light late in the day, which then it makes them and reinforce them that late chronotype. So it's sort of like reinforcing like the particular aspects of our lives. And then another element that probably might come to our minds

and that we experience ourselves across our lifespan is age. So if we think about like what was our chronotype when we were kids, we were definitely much earlier a morning type than we are when we become adult. And this also changed towards aging. When we become older, we also reverse back to these early chronotypes. And an interesting population is teenagers. So teenagers are well characterized by having late chronotypes. So they used to be really early when they were kids.

Then they become really, really late chronotypes when they become teenagers. And this is actually this awareness of like how our chronotypes will change across our life span is, for example, now coming into conversations about starting times at the schools, because particularly for teenagers in many cases, they are asleep deprived because they go to bed relatively late. And then they still have to wake up relatively early to go to school. So quite a lot of factors playing a role in defining the chronotype. You mentioned their schooling. So this affects sort of cognitive function.

and our performance at school or at work. Yeah, so definitely. So we experience, like most of us, like our cognition and our capacities from learning, memory, they changes across the day. And depending on your chronotype, it might vary in which will be like your peak timing, but definitely this happens during our wakefulness time

and during our daytime. But interesting, like these rhythms in cognition capability is not only related to the time that we have been awake, Also, it is like clock control. So our cognition, clock control will be like less better to perform, you know, in a high demanding task during the nighttime, or our reaction time will get slower during the nighttime as they are compared during the daytime.

So these things are like now becoming more and more aware of like how much they can impact our daily performance. Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great, till the CFO sees them, that's bull's bend. and marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend.

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stress and depression, what kind of effect can they have? So in terms of stress, it can impact like body clocks. And if we take, for example, one of the hormones that is stress related like cortisol. So cortisol follows a daily pattern, so it's regulated by our clocks. So typically the levels in our blood will start increasing, coinciding for our waking time. They will stay high during the day and then they will fall down to low levels during the nighttime. So this will be a typical rhythm that we have. But on top of that, this is a stress hormone. So it could be also released under conditions of stress.

And these hormones can be used for different, like, tissues across our body as a time signal. So you can see that there might be situations in which, like, by having, like, the presence of this hormone, it could face shift or, like, change the timing of some of those clocks. and this could effectively lead to a like internal desynchrony between like different clocks in our body. But obviously when we talk about stress, stress does not come along as just the release of this hormone. It comes with behavioral changes, like for example, changes in arousal.

And we know that in addition to light, for example, which I mentioned is the most powerful signal to adjust the clock, arousal can also do that to some extent. In addition, stress sometimes comes associated with sleep deprivation, and we know that sleep deprivation can feed back and impact the timing of the clock. So it's sort of like a lot of like different aspects that stress bring into the picture that all of them could impact the clocks. But another aspect that's interesting about stress is that even, and this is particular from work than in animals, is the idea that not only like stress can impact the clock, but also our response to stress,

it might change depending on time of day. And this is actually a quite interesting idea because if you think about there are particular time of day in which we will be able to cope better with stressful situations, then if you need to have a stressful meeting, maybe there is a particular time of day

that the negative impact of having that stress will be actually minimised. So that will be an ideal situation. So having said that, the clocks are due to change from GMT and BST. So what effect does that have on us? You know, it's only an hour, but a lot of people struggle with it, don't they?

Yeah, so the idea with the daylight saving timing, so effectively what happened is that the clocks move backwards by one hour. So not only like during those days associated with the clock change, we are losing one hour of sleep. So that means that we will be asleep deprived over the first few days, which it could have an impact on its own. But also, what is happening is that because the, clocks are moving earlier, what happened is that we will have light until later on the day.

And subsequently, what will happen is that in the morning, we will have leg exposes to light early in the day. So we will be in a situation in which for months, our clocks will have to deal with being exposed to light later, that way they should be. And as we have already mentioned, like this exposure to light later in the day, it tends to delay the clock, which it might not be a problem on its own if you could wake up later the day after. But the problem is that our alarm clocks stays the same. So effectively, what we are doing is we are going to bed later, but they still have to wake up earlier or like at the same time. So this is why in terms of like public health or like what it will be better for like, you know, the timing of our clocks, the idea of

staying with the standard timing is a better one. And they are now positions from expert from the US and also across Europe supporting the idea, at least with information that we have so far, that the standard time will be better aligned with having our clocks in a better timing. Yeah, sort of coming off the back of that, I've heard of something called social jet lag. So, you know, could you explain that for us, please? Yeah, so before we're going to social jet lag, we could talk about what is jet lag. So jet lag, probably all of us have experienced at least once in our lives, or at least even if it is just by one hour

when we do the changing timing, but it happens when we travel to a different time zone. So let's take, for example, when we go from the UK to the US. And what happened is that we arrive to the US, there is a change in timing, but our internal clock is still synchronized

to the days in British time. And then it arrives in New York and it needs to adjust to a new light-dard cycle. And that takes a bit of time. So our clocks needs to, use light signal and other temporal cues on the environment to readjust. And different functions in our body might readjust at different speeds. So we will feel this sort of like feeling that you are feeling unwell,

like your eating patterns are off, like your sleeping pattern, and it takes a while to readjust. So the idea now is it has become apparent that we don't need to travel actually to experience jet luck. we just need to look at, for example, what is our sleeping patterns or sleeping times between weekdays and weekends. And what it typically happened during our weekends is that we go to bed much, much later

that we do during the rest of the week. It could be because we are going out, even if we are early chronotypes, sometimes friends might come over and you will stay and go to bed much later that you would do, which effectively is like what you do when you go to the US, for example, and their days are stay longer.

So this happens, let's say, on your Friday, Saturday night. Then, obviously, you will wake up later on the Sunday. So you have, like, shift your clock during, like, these weekend days. But then Monday comes back, and you have to realign and get back again to, like, the early week. So it's almost like having a changing, like a jet lag that is happening because of our social schedules between the weekday. and weekends. And also it is the idea for chronotypes that are late chronotypes, the social jetluck is even more pronounced

because these are people that during the week, they need to wake up earlier because of like work schedules or like social imposed timings. But then as soon as the weekend comes and you are released from those constraints, you actually follow your internal timing. And your internal timing is making you to be awake until later and wake up later. But obviously, Monday always comes back and you have to readjust that.

So that's like the idea of like even living in our houses, we are experiencing social, like a jet lag social, but just our like weekdays, weekend patterns. So what can we do to sort of mitigate against this then? I mean, people talk about sleep hygiene. You know, what does that mean? So when we talk about sleep hygiene, it will be sort of like a set of measurements or tips that are aiming. to promote good sleep. So that could go from like environmental aspects, like being a place that is quiet,

that there is, you know, you don't have any sort of light sources. But in the context of circadian clocks, the idea of a sleep hygiene will primarily be like trying to keep regularity. So trying to minimize these like differences in your sleep timings between weekdays and weekends or your waking up timing. So all what you can bring about regularity and maintaining, like, those robust timings across the week actually helps to keep your clock in sync, like with the environment and avoiding these differences. The other things, for example, in terms of sleep hygiene is we can be mindful about what is our lifestyle in terms of can we minimize the impact of light during the evening times where we know that it can actually promote that phase delay and making your clock later.

So these are recommendations of like trying to dim the lights during the night time or like try to, you know, avoid like exposure to electronic devices one hour or like just don't do that before you want to go to bed because it won't not help for you to fall asleep. Another aspect could be also related with food intake. So the idea of don't have a big meal just when you are so close to go to bed because, you know, that's not like the body should be preparing to fall asleep, not to have to be engaging on having to digest the food. So these are like some of like the tips that could form part of like that sleep hygiene.

But one of the key one is regularity in the patterns. So how about exercising? You know, when's the best time to do that during the day if we want to sort of have good sleep? So it's interesting about exercising because it's still and the, you know, like investigation, what would be like the best timing and depending also. So people might have different chronotypes. So obviously there will be people that this cannot do really the exercise in the morning because I'm fully asleep almost when I have walking up.

So in terms, for example, of muscle strength, our muscle strength tend to pick later in the day or someone have higher body temperature levels. But obviously, like there is a training aspect of it. So if you get trained to do exercise at a particular time of day, this actually can provide a time queue, for example, for the clocks in your muscle. So I think as soon as it brings regularity, there is no strong bias towards what time of day may be better. But the idea will be, for example,

that you might not want it to do it so close to your sleeping time because obviously exercise, like put some other mechanism in place that it might actually promote for you to be awake. So that will be potentially, I would say, will be the best. How about supplements then, like things like melatonin and antihistamines? So in terms of melatonin, melatonin is actually a hormone that produces our body, like the pineal gland, during the night time. So that regulation takes place by under the clock, the action of this clock. So it is the idea that because we only produce it during the night time is a darkness.

It's almost like a chemical darkness signal to our body, which in humans who we are day. active species. So basically, these hormones will promote sleep and support like a sleep process. So this is why it is used, for example, in supplements like to treat insomnia, because it could be used as a signal. In the UK, melatonin can be taken, but it has to be prescribed places like the US, you can also like buy over the counter. So one of the main action is that it promotes sleep. On the other hand, because it is a signal that can. and adjust timing of a clock. So it's what we call chronobiotic.

So that means that it could be used to adjust timing. So some people might take it to cope with jet lag, for example, because it will help you to resynchronize to a particular schedule faster. But I guess that as any pharmacological treatment, obviously there are side effects, melatonin, does things on the body beyond like promoting sleep and also adjusting clock timing. So it should be, you know, when it is, is because there is a reason behind it and being aware of like the effects that it has.

So sort of sticking with jet lag, I've just thought, I've heard some people say that travelling east or west is different. It affects you more. Is there any truth to that? Yeah, that's true. So when we talk about the concept of circadian rhythms, we use the word that is close to 24 hours. And this is because these internal timekeepers operate with a period. So they repeat it's like almost every 24 hours. But it's not exactly 24 hours. So in the case of humans, it's slightly longer. So if you wish, it's like our days would take to be,

if we didn't have any environmental cues to align our clocks, we will actually each day will be a bit like later. So when we travel to the US or like to West countries, what it happened is that our days needs to become longer. Because when we arrive to destination, that is still like daylight, for example. And this is something that our clocks are quite good at doing because they intrinsically turns to run in a longer scale.

However, when we travel on the opposite direction towards east, so in that case, what we are asking our clock to do is to advance. And this makes the clock, if you wish, you can say, struggles a little bit more on coping with that. So this is why when we travel east, it always, it feels, that is much more difficult to align ourselves and to re-intrain to those conditions compare when we travel on the other direction. So we've covered quite a lot of topics there.

So just sort of by way of summary, do you have a sort of, you know, top of the pops list of tips that people can do to align their body clocks more in sync with their environment? So one of the first thing will be to be aware. So, you know, to be aware that there are like the chronotypes, to be aware that we have a clock, like how that clock may operate. So I think that will make us to start paying attention to how our lifestyle, how our habits can impact the function of those clocks.

So moving from that is, okay, we know that light in conditions and light exposure. So light exposure towards end of a day delays the clock earlier in the day, it advances the clock. So if you then think about what is what I am aiming to do, for example, if you want to delay your clock, it's okay, I need to expose myself to light later in the day. But if what you are trying to do is actually become an earlier person. What you should try to do is avoid exposing to light later in the day or minimize, you know, the lighting conditions that you are experiencing.

So I think that will be one, just the lifestyle. So it is not important just like that we do things. important when we do them. So the time of day effects of what we do. And also, as any other system that we have in our body, we have to be mindful of things that will help them to support, to make our clocks more robust. And one of those is to bring regularity. Being regularity in our, like, you know, lifestyle, that can help to keep those clocks synchronized. And that's also like important, for example, during aging or during particular like disease state in which our clocks get weekend. So with lifestyle, we can actually help to promote and bring that robustness and

like that strength to the clocks to support like healthy states. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. Brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr. Beatrice Bano. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a Copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal.

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