Dr. Michael Greger

Yeah, so our circadian rhythm is the kind of daily rhythm, almost 24-hour rhythm.

So even if you're put in a bunker with constant lighting, your body will still, you'll have this cycle as if you were, even though you have no cues from the outside, you have no watch, you have no idea what time it is,

you'll start getting sleepy at kind of the same time you normally get sleepy.

You wake up about the same time you normally sleep.

But in that kind of environment, you can do these laboratory experiments on people where it's like, okay, what if we put you on a 27-hour cycle?

So we put the lights on, right?

But then we just stretch it a little bit, and it totally messes people up.

Wow.

It really undercuts our biology.

We were so meant to, because then all of a sudden it's chopping it through.

And so it was these kind of experiments that really showed up.

And so what we see is we see these shift workers.

Or working late nights.

Right.

So, well, if you're only working late nights, that's a problem in and of itself.

But it's the people that are shifting.

So they're doing the late nights.

So like, you know, people in postgraduate medical ed training, these residents who will do nights in the hospital.

And then they'll do a date.

And that is really difficult.