By not sleeping in line with the cirdadian rhythms, I noticed that I have frequent and intense food cravings for "junky" foods like pizza, sweets, asparatame-filled pop, etc. However, when I'm in bed around now (10:30ish p.m. and up around ...6:30 a.m.) I feel WAAAAAYYYYY more energetic, most positive in general, my food cravings virtually disappear, and my mind and memory are sharper. I learned in my recent-most certification course throug the C.H.E.K. Institute that going to bed late and rising late trigger the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn triggers the increased release of various fight-or-flight hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline, aldosterone, and cortisol. These hormones, in turn, send messages to the brain to seek out fuel foods like fats and quick-release sugars so as to fuel our fighting or flighting. Being in a chronic state of over-active sympathetic activation leads to things like adrenal fatigue, weight gain, moodiness, depression, anxiety, exhaustion, lowered cognitive and physical performance, etc., and it is becoming more and more common in our "developed", modern world.
Actually, if you want to get technical and precise, 10-6 is better. Physical and physiologic repair is said to take place from 10 p.m.-2 a.m., and psycho-emotional-spiritual from 2 a.m.-6 a.m., so getting in bed by 10 and up by 6 is best. B...elieve me, you'll feel it! When we know we're on point is when we're waking up and really feeling happy and energized versus always wanting more sleep.
What I am going to do is get a blackout curtain for my room so I can control the amount of light I experience with just my Light Alarm Clock. That way I won't have to be quite as much at the mercy of the changing cycles of light and dark, for, like I said previously, as soon as light starts entering your eyes, even when they're closed, that will signal to the bodymind to stop producing melotonin and start cranking out the cortisol.
When you think about it, before things like the industrial and scientific revolutions wherein people starting inventing all sorts of things which forever changed our ability to live in harmony with nature, we would awake with the sun, and go to bed with the dark, more or less, anyway. That is what is means to wake and sleep in harmony with the circadian rhythms, and the closer in line we can stay with them, the better we feel, think, do, and ARE.
My clock is ok, but, just like the sun, it starts oozing out gentle bits of light about a half hour before I actually need to wake up, and the amount gradually increases as if a mini-sun were rising right beside me each day. It was designed this way to duplicate how we would naturally be awoken in nature, but what I often experience is waking up before I actually intend to, which is annoying at times.
What I am going to do is get a blackout curtain for my room so I can control the amount of light I experience with just my Light Alarm Clock. That way I won't have to be quite as much at the mercy of the changing cycles of light and dark, for, like I said previously, as soon as light starts entering your eyes, even when they're closed, that will signal to the bodymind to stop producing melotonin and start cranking out the cortisol.
When you think about it, before things like the industrial and scientific revolutions wherein people starting inventing all sorts of things which forever changed our ability to live in harmony with nature, we would awake with the sun, and go to bed with the dark, more or less, anyway. That is what is means to wake and sleep in harmony with the circadian rhythms, and the closer in line we can stay with them, the better we feel, think, do, and ARE.
My clock is ok, but, just like the sun, it starts oozing out gentle bits of light about a half hour before I actually need to wake up, and the amount gradually increases as if a mini-sun were rising right beside me each day. It was designed this way to duplicate how we would naturally be awoken in nature, but what I often experience is waking up before I actually intend to, which is annoying at times.
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