Dr. Michael Grandner

I think this is a normal human function that when our brain is awake, when it wants to be asleep.

especially when it's right there in that circadian dip of all kinds of other functions.

It's this perfect storm of bad choices where it's reward seeking, but decreased reward processing.

So we seek the thing that feels good, but it feels less good when we do it.

So we seek it more.

And our decision-making is we're not thinking about tomorrow.

This is also why people wake up in the middle of the night and they're all freaked out about stuff.

And then in the morning they look back and they think, man,

I was all worked up about that, but it's really not the end of the world.

I can solve this problem.

Our brains, when we're kept awake, when we don't want to be, that we're not our best self.

And it applies to food too.

I know.

I don't know.

I mean, we've known for years that... So if you ask a circadian scientist, is shift work worse for you than smoking?

They will usually have to stop and think and be like, ha, good question.

And then you were supposed to say, I didn't realize that was a hard question.

I thought it was obvious that smoking is the worst thing ever.

Like if you smoke, whatever else you do, it's the smoking that's probably gonna kill you.

Shift work isn't good for you.