Getting enough sleep regularly can be tough — and even harder when you're traveling for the holidays. "We need sleep like we need water," says Jade Wu, a behavioral sleep medicine psychologist and author of the book Hello Sleep. She and host Regina G. Barber discuss what's happening to our bodies when we get jet lag and the clocks in our body get out of whack. They also get into the science of the circadian rhythm and how to prepare for a long flight across time zones. Check out CDC's website for tips on minimizing jet lag.Want to hear more science of holiday living? Email us your ideas to [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is jet lag and how does it affect us?
Our bodies have billions of clocks. They're in our cells, our organs, our brains. And they make up our circadian rhythm.
The circadian system should work like a symphony that plays in sync together and on time. If all our clocks run as they should and together in sync, then our circadian rhythms are doing great.
And so that's why when we get jet lagged or, you know, have a baby and your whole schedule goes topsy turvy, what happens is that your internal circadian rhythms, your internal clocks start to not play in sync with each other or start to shift. and they no longer match the day-night cycle that's actually in your environment.
So that symphony is making very distressing music.
Yes, it sounds jarring, it doesn't make sense. You're like, this is just noise, it's not music.
That noise can mess up our basic bodily functions.
We might be really tired or have difficulty concentrating, can't remember stuff, can't react quickly. Also just be physically run down, tired, exhausted. unmotivated, lethargic.
And if you have other medical conditions already, like chronic pain or diabetes or high blood pressure, all those things are going to be more exacerbated or your symptoms are going to be worse when your circadian rhythm is misaligned from the outside world.
So today on the show, our circadian rhythm. how our bodies know when it's time to sleep, and what happens when we don't. I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. So Jade, let's talk about like circadian rhythm a bit more, starting with like what's the natural circadian rhythm for humans?
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Chapter 2: What is the circadian rhythm and how does it work?
Yeah, yeah. And these folks have a really hard time functioning in our 24-hour world because every day they're having to fight upstream basically to live in a 24-hour world when their body wants to live in a 25-hour world. And then occasionally someone's clock might be 23.8, for example. They're getting sleepy at 7 p.m. They're waking up at 3, you know, ready to go.
So it's not really helpful to be at either end of the spectrum of having too short of a circadian day or too long of a circadian day because our society runs on 24 hours.
The Mars day is slightly over 24 hours. So, you know, those people with slightly longer ones, they can, you know, they can move to Mars. Yeah. Great. All right. So you talked about these like light cues and other cues. Like how does our body know when we should sleep?
Great question. So light is by far the strongest cue that we can have. Because if you think about it, your brain lives in a dark cave, right? It's inside your skull. It doesn't know what's going on in the outside world. Really the only way that it knows whether it's daytime or nighttime is is by how much light is coming in to your eyes.
So yeah, your eyes are not only the windows to your soul, but also the windows to your circadian rhythm. So ideally, you have lots of light coming into your eyes during the daytime, and that tells the brain, oh, hey, it's daytime. Let's send out signals to the rest of the body to get your metabolism running, get your body temperature up, and get everything up and running.
And then if there's not a lot of light coming into the eyes, then that's where the brain says, oh, okay, it's nighttime, so it's time to send out some melatonin, which is the messenger that will tell the rest of the body to close down the factory, to shut down the machines, and to start resting for the night.
So you're saying that light will affect how much melatonin is being produced in your body?
Yes. So melatonin is a hormone that our bodies naturally produce, and it's really a time-keeping hormone. Sometimes people have called it the vampire hormone, the nighttime hormone, because it comes out at night. It starts to ramp up in the evenings as it starts to get dark, stays high through the night, and then goes away in the early morning hours.
And it's basically sending the message to the rest of the body. Hey, it's nighttime. It's time to shut down. Or, hey, I'm going away now that time. That means it's about to be morning. So start to ramp up those systems.
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Chapter 3: How do time zones impact our internal clocks?
And it's not regulated, so you don't know what you're taking.
Correct. It's considered a dietary supplement. It's not regulated the same way that a prescription medication would be. So you don't know if you're getting any melatonin or too much melatonin. You might be getting serotonin or CBD or other stuff that is not, you know, labeled. Wow.
Okay. So we've been talking about sleep, you know, beyond jet lag. What are the consequences for like not paying attention to your body when you need that sleep? Because our bodies need sleep.
Absolutely. Yes. We need sleep like we need water and food. It's just foundational to our ability to exist and function.
If we try to ignore our lack of sleep or even the timing of our sleep, if it's wildly inconsistent or if it's just really misaligned with what our bodies naturally want to do, then we end up not only not functioning at our best, but we also end up putting ourselves on the back leg in terms of our health in the long run.
So we can have higher blood pressure, for example, and have more risk that's added or more risk that's accumulating towards heart disease. So, for example, we know that people who don't sleep enough and people whose sleep timing is very inconsistent,
If we look at them 10 years later, 15 years later, they're more likely to have heart disease, more likely to have cancer, more likely to have had some sort of fatal health event, or just to have passed away. So these cumulative types of health risks can add up really over the years.
And even things about our day-to-day quality of life, like if you have an injury or if you have chronic pain, not getting good sleep and not being on a good schedule will exacerbate that pain and exacerbate our emotion dysregulation too. So we have a harder time coping with pain, coping with stress, coping with anxiety, You know, things that happen that are out of our control.
So, yeah, emotionally, physically, mentally, we're going to be affected.
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Chapter 4: What role does light play in regulating sleep?
What you can do is start to shift your circadian rhythm towards empowerment. your destination circadian rhythm. So for example, since you'll be traveling east, you can go to bed and get up a little bit earlier every day. Or if you have the freedom to do so, you could also go the other direction. You can go to bed later until you go halfway around the clock and you land on Australia time.
If you don't have the luxury of being able to shift your rhythm leading up to a trip, then the best thing you can do is just to try to protect your sleep as much as possible leading up to the trip. Maybe even sleep a little bit more than you usually do. don't force yourself. If sleep doesn't come, it doesn't come, but give yourself the best opportunity to bank some sleep.
And then when you do get to your destination, use your best friend's light and naps to adjust to your new environment. So use light whenever you need to be awake, especially in the morning of work, whatever day you need to be awake. So that means going outside. That means using a light box and use naps to catch up on the sleep that you lost through the process of shifting your rhythm.
But don't nap too close to the time when you should be going to bed at your new nighttime. And then after a few days, hopefully you will have shifted over to your new schedule.
Jade, thank you so much for talking to us today. Oh, it's my pleasure. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez, and Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber.
Thank you, as always, for listening to Shortwave from NPR.
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Chapter 6: What are the consequences of a misaligned circadian rhythm?
So we can have higher blood pressure, for example, and have more risk that's added or more risk that's accumulating towards heart disease. So, for example, we know that people who don't sleep enough and people whose sleep timing is very inconsistent,
If we look at them 10 years later, 15 years later, they're more likely to have heart disease, more likely to have cancer, more likely to have had some sort of fatal health event, or just to have passed away. So these cumulative types of health risks can add up really over the years.
And even things about our day-to-day quality of life, like if you have an injury or if you have chronic pain, not getting good sleep and not being on a good schedule will exacerbate that pain and exacerbate our emotion dysregulation too. So we have a harder time coping with pain, coping with stress, coping with anxiety, You know, things that happen that are out of our control.
So, yeah, emotionally, physically, mentally, we're going to be affected.
OK, so given all that, I'd love to end on empowerment. How can people listening prepare like and lessen their jet lag?
What you can do is start to shift your circadian rhythm towards empowerment. your destination circadian rhythm. So for example, since you'll be traveling east, you can go to bed and get up a little bit earlier every day. Or if you have the freedom to do so, you could also go the other direction. You can go to bed later until you go halfway around the clock and you land on Australia time.
If you don't have the luxury of being able to shift your rhythm leading up to a trip, then the best thing you can do is just to try to protect your sleep as much as possible leading up to the trip. Maybe even sleep a little bit more than you usually do. don't force yourself. If sleep doesn't come, it doesn't come, but give yourself the best opportunity to bank some sleep.
And then when you do get to your destination, use your best friend's light and naps to adjust to your new environment. So use light whenever you need to be awake, especially in the morning of work, whatever day you need to be awake. So that means going outside. That means using a light box and use naps to catch up on the sleep that you lost through the process of shifting your rhythm.
But don't nap too close to the time when you should be going to bed at your new nighttime. And then after a few days, hopefully you will have shifted over to your new schedule.
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