Now, what can this circadian rhythm do? Well, for starters, it regulates your body and tell your body when to eat, sleep, even up to regular bowel movement. The discussion about circadian rhythm is very broad but here i'll only look at it in term of how it affects our sleep.
Well, as i mentioned earlier, circadian rhythm can affect our sleep very much. You can read about sleep here. The circadian rhythm is used to control when your body will go to sleep. By when, it is not the time concern but rather the condition in which our body is being exposed to. To put it simply, our body reacts with the illumination of light, the body condition, the environment and etc in order to put us to sleep.
Normal people, they wake up in the morning and goes to sleep at night. Let's say that the usual time for people to sleep is at 11 pm and wake up at 6.30 am. Now, if the process continues for almost everyday, our body will get accustomed to it and after some time, we can even wake up without having to use the alarm. The role of circadian rhythm here is to tell your body when to sleep, in this case 11 pm and when to wake up. By adjusting the body to react with 11 pm condition, we are able to sleep on time and wake up at the desired time.
What about nocturnal people? The process is the same. Let's say that this group sleeps at 5.30 am and wake up at 1.00 pm. The circadian rhythm will adjusts the body so that it tells your body when to sleep when the condition of 5.30 am is met. This is why nocturnal people have trouble to sleep early because the condition is not right for them to sleep.
In both of the cases, even if they change the sleeping behavior say for the normal group they sleep late and the nocturnal group sleep early. They will wake up at the usual time in this case at 6.30 am and 1.00 pm. This is because the body did not yet receive a message to wake up as the condition was not met. The circadian rhythm as i told earlier depends on the external stimuli such as light, sound or temperature. Everyone may vary in term of the external stimuli but most of the people respond the the light when it is switched on, sound when there's alarm or temperature when your a/c or fan does not work.
During a different weather condition for example, rainy day. The light is not so much, the sound if there's no thunder will be quite low and the temperature is just nice. This condition may be similar to when you want to sleep at 10.00 pm or 11.00 pm. Because of the same condition, you'll tend to feel sleepy and some might overslept or wake up early depending on the weather condition. Even if you sleep at night, and the night was scorching hot like it was during the day, you will not be able to sleep. That's how much circadian rhythm can affect us.
For student, a good night sleep is important for us in order to get a good day. But i believe, most of the students are nocturnal. That is why they got some problem when the class starts at 8.00 am. The only way you can change this is by forcing your circadian rhythm to change. Force yourself to sleep early for example at 11 pm. Yeah, i know you'll only doodle around your bed because you can't sleep yet but make sure you must not open your eyes and do some other things besides lying in bed. A nocturnal also tends to wake up late and to change this, use alarms. *Note the (s)* . This is in order to disrupt the condition and force the brain to signal the body to wake up as the condition is now different.
Rule of thumb will tell you to keep this condition for 21 days and eventually you'll become a morning person. It may seems hard a little but keep trying. Have your friends to force you to do this if you're willing to change.
*The information is based on what i personally understands about circadian rhythm. If there's anything wrong, please tell me.
**The sleep pattern in here is monosomnia. The circadian rhythm works in different way in polysomnia pattern.
0 comments:
Post a Comment