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Camping Helps Set Circadian Clocks Straight
cold fjord writes "Counsel & Heal reports, 'Many people are stuck in the vicious cycle of late nights and late mornings. However, a new study reveals that a week of camping in the great outdoors may help people set their clocks straight. A new study, published in the journal Current Biology, reveals that if given a chance, our body's internal biological clocks will tightly synchronize to a natural, midsummer light-dark cycle. The study found that a week of exposure to true dawn and dusk with no artificial lights had a significant effect on people who might otherwise describe themselves as night owls. Researchers found that under those conditions, night owls quickly become early birds. "By increasing our exposure to sunlight and reducing our exposure to electrical lighting at night, we can turn our internal clock and sleep times back and likely make it easier to awaken and be alert in the morning," Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado Boulder said in a news release.'"
You call naturally awakening early "straight", I call it pagan witchcraft. I'm fine with staying up late thanks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It does the same thing, for years on end, without having to take vacation days. The funny thing is that you do actually get used to it; I was a night owl, but not anymore. Now, if I do sleep in, I actually wake up with a headache.
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Anyone who has been camping should have experienced this. It's really nice to be in sync with the day again, makes one happy. With computers (blue lights destroys Melatonin and thus makes you less sleepy), days last longer and longer.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Why not just open the blinds before bedtime and turn off the lights progressively at night... or whatever the magic is... that does this?
I assume most whacked out rythms are just either from work schedules or start from bad self-discipline keeping on watching TV or hanging on the computer way past tired. In the latter situation, with smartphones, that means not even most accessible camping is going to help.
Call it bullshit, but even things that you consider innate should still be held to the standard of peer review publishing. Remember, it was once innate that the earth is flat. People studying "scratch, itch, or not blink" and not too long ago smoking figure out things about health effects of all sorts of things that are innately harmless because there is no immediate affect. Asbestos, lead, and smoking come to mind.
Attacking science, no matter what popular opinion of it is, is dangerous. You didn't die of some terrible disease because scientists figured out vaccines. Engineers using what scientists figured out about electricity, magnetism, and mathematics built the computer you are using to read about this "bullshit". We already have enough anti-intellectualism in this world. There are morons in congress (and people who vote for them) that want to take a religious, "common sense", or tough guy approach to problems even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Considering sleep quality and quantity is vital to a persons mental and physical health, sleep research is important. There might be some people reading this that have never lived in a rural area and have never been camping that might just have sleep problems that could benefit from this.
Studies show that me picking a fight with, oh, just about anyone, will get my clock cleaned, a hunderd percent guarantee.
And who doesn't love a clean clock?
I've used 2-3 day backpacking trips to reset my clock for years. Typically, after moving for 10-15 miles in a day under the sun with 25-50lbs on my pack and then making camp, I'm ready for bed at sundown anyway. I actually have to force myself to stay up til 9 or 10pm. For the last few years, though, I've used this to reset my kids summer schedules. Typically by mid-August they're going to bed at 2-3am and getting up around 12-1pm each day. So the last week of summer for the last 3 years we've gone camping. Nothing special no grueling backpacking trips. Just camping at a campsite with tents and a fire and day hikes, etc. After a week of this they're on a sun-up to sun-down sleep schedule and ready for the new school year.