November 18, 2022 • 26 mins
Most of us take sunset as the cue to start winding down our day, but what if the sun never sets? The remote city of Inuvik, Canada is so deep in the Northern Hemisphere that it experiences months of non-stop sunlight in the summer, followed by months of fulltime darkness in the winter. Host Anahad O’Connor sits down with Inuvik resident Adi Scott who details what it’s like to keep a sleep schedule when you can no longer rely on the regular day-night cycle of the sun. Joined by neuroscientist and sleep expert Dr Steven Lockley, explore the powerful impact of light and dark on the brain, and how that triggers the complex internal mechanisms that influence our sleep.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
When you go to a friend's for dinner and you
get talking all you go out on the land on
a boat, go outside anywhere on the walk, and you
just kind of relaxing and chilling out, and then you
get back into the house and look up clock. You're like,
oh god, it wasn't like five hours late. And then
I thought it was because the sun did not go down,
(00:31):
and I did not realize because my brain didn't tell
me that that wasn't normal. When most of us say
on top of the world, we usually mean it metaphorically,
as in being in a good mood or in a
good place. But for Addie Scott, top of the world
is a very real location that she calls home. You
(00:53):
think of like Canada and North America on a map
and go as far north as you can and west
without getting into Alaska, and you find any Addie is
a coordinator for Community Greenhouse in Inevo, Canada, a city
located in the Arctic Circle. Because of its extreme north
location and the tilt of our planet's axis, people who
(01:16):
live their experience fifty six days of continuous sunlight every
summer and about thirty days of polar night in the winter,
so in the summer, I usually just like make sure
that I try not to go outside pass like eleven PM,
and if I do, I get very confused and my
brain is like, Kate, it's time to go to work.
(01:37):
Now it's the morning. But it's great for waking up
in the morning because it's just bright all the time,
and in the winter mad it's hard to care a bit.
In most inhabited places on the planet, we can rely
on signals from the sun to let us know when
it's time to go about certain parts of our day.
So for Addie, who moved to Inuvik from Yorkshire in
(02:00):
United Kingdom, the endless days and continuous nights were something
she had to get used to. It's honestly, like I mean,
it sounds like a cliche. It's nothing I've ever experienced before,
and it's nothing I could have imagined before. It's a
very unique thing that few humans will ever witness in
their lives, and while whole populations have learned to thrive
(02:22):
in this environment, it still comes with its own set
of challenges. I also sat down with Dr Stephen Lockley,
a neuroscientist an Associate professor of medicine at Harvard University,
to talk about what these unique and extreme day and
night periods due to our minds, our bodies, and of
course our sleep. We've not evolved as humans to live
(02:45):
in constant dungness or constant light. We can override it
with the use of electric light or light avoidance in
the summer, but clearly there are still some anger effects
of the light environment. It's not exactly the same as
living further south, and so yes, we do find the
further north you go there is a bigger risk to health.
(03:05):
Despite the risk, people have figured out how to adapt,
with evidence showing that humans may have first migrated deep
into the northern hemisphere as far back as thirty thousand
years ago. Today, we're going to look at what sleep
is like in the Arctic Circle, a place with light
and dark cycles that seem alien to the rest of
the world and where the adaptability of its residents is
(03:27):
a testament to the ingenuity of the human race. On
this episode of Chasing Sleep, when the Sun doesn't sleep, Hi,
I'm on a hut O'Connor, and this is Chasing Sleep
and I heart Radio production and partnership with Mattress Firm,
(03:58):
located two miles north of Seattle, and with only one
road connecting it to the rest of the globe. A
Novic Canada is one of the most remote yet interesting
places on Earth. Most of the Arctic Circle is so
extreme that, despite some modern settlements, a lot of the
land remains completely untouched. The wildlife found here is some
(04:19):
of the most unique. The forests are dense and lush,
the waters are clear and blue, the day last an
entire season, and the nights are illuminated by the amazing
northern lights. It's basically like real life Naunia is the
best way to describe it. So after I finished my Masters,
(04:40):
I didn't know what to go, So I threw a
dot at a map and this was the closest place
that landed. So here I am doing the things. Wow,
So you really did that and decided, okay, that's where
I'm headed, And how did you figure out, you know,
how you're going to get there and prepare for it
(05:01):
and make a life there. I actually just kind of
zoomed in on Google Maps and was like, wow, it
was like really nothing there, and then kind of zoomed
in a little bit closer and then found the names
of the towns like surrounding it. And then just looked
for volunteering and job opportunities to travel and then found
a place working with sled dogs and working with them
(05:25):
and emails called them was like, hey, do you guys
have sled dog training jobs? Is that a thing? Um?
And they said yeah, And I worked for them for
like eight months, left on a road trip and then
got a job at the Greenhouse. So while it must
be pretty amazing to be surrounded by so much beauty,
how do you handle the unique times of total light
(05:46):
and dark that come with living in a NOVIC. It's
kind of amazing really, Like in the summer, it happens
so fast that you go from darkness to like twenty
four hour daylight basically. So I know, officially it's twenty
four hour daylight for one month, but the sun even
(06:06):
though it sets a little bit, it's still light for
like three months either side of that. It's really really cool.
And I don't know, you have no idea what time
is any time of day, And if you're really bad
at wearing a watchwhaw keeping your phone on you like
I am, you're just like best, but wondering the whole
time you have no idea what time is they're going
for a while with the dog. I'll hanging out with
(06:26):
some friends and you look outside and be like it's
still light. Maybe it's ten pm. Maybe I'll go to
bed it's like five am, and uh, they're like, oh,
it's the next day. Oops. So that's constant daylight and
then the opposite happens in the winter. Yeah, the winter
is twenty four or seven darkness. But it's kind of
amazing because you get the northern lights the whole time,
(06:47):
Like in the middle of the day, you'd be like
walking to work to do this, just be amazing lights
in the sky. So I think I in terms of
like sleeping, the winter is so much easier just because
it's dock all the time. It's kind of nice. But
in the summer weekly Operation Nighttime in my house because
(07:09):
you have to like just close all the windows all
the courtins, put like copboard on to block out the light.
At like ten pm, just run around the house play
Operation nighttime so you can. So I'm guessing Operation Nighttime
is a technique for adapting to the constant light. So
can you walk us through exactly what that looks like. Yeah,
So when it hits ten pm, I have a little
(07:32):
alm on my phone to remind me to do it.
Otherwise I just yeah, I have no idea that it's
that time. And then go around and we have like
black outlines on all of the windows. Um so me
and my housemates we go around and like cover room
each We just go and pull them all down. And
the most important one I always forget is to close
(07:52):
my bedroom. Could so when I go into my bedroom,
it's doc But yeah, it's just remembering to do it,
signing along and pulling those blackout clients down, making a
night time. It sounds like a great way to recreate
night and also a pretty interesting reminder of just how
important the darkness is to signaling sleep mechanisms in our brains.
(08:16):
But prepping the house is one thing. What's it like
to work in this environment? I mean, gardening is very
seasonal anyway, but it's more extreme here. So the gardening
season now like starts in May when it gets warm
enough because we just get the light back then. And
then in September is when we start to get what
(08:37):
you call it the average day with like a normal
sunset sunrise kind of thing. But that's when it starts
to get really cold here. Through the summer. It's amazing.
I'm working in the greenhouse. The plants love the twenty
four hour daylight, so I'm curious how the plants respond
over there to these periods of extended sunlight and darkness.
(08:59):
With Jesus especially, you look on the back of a
seed packet radishes would normally be like one to two
months to get a fully grown radish for the good
old salad. Here, it's like three weeks. Everything grows crazy fast, incredible.
So the plants love the summer, But what does life
look like for the people here with such dramatic shifts
(09:21):
in seasons. Honestly, do you really recognize the shift in
people's behavioral patterns? Which I find really interesting? Really, Yeah,
So in the summer, people are like active, going for
a walk. You spend like so much time on the
land and like you're out as much as you possibly
candy um, and we're in a delta here too, so
there's so much water and lakes and rivers, so people
(09:45):
are often at like and canoes on the boat, and
you just spend as much time outside as you can,
like it's amazing. And then as you like shift into
getting colder, and then in the everyone basically just hibernates
and does crafts. Does crafts. Yeah, keep yourself busy during
(10:06):
the like the winter months. That's a traditional thing as well,
Like crafts and making things is a very big winter tradition,
especially so the women appeared to because there's just less
hunting and less gathering you can do on the land.
That's true of people's like natural rhythms to when it
gets really cold outside and you're like, okay, consider the energy.
(10:29):
So what about holidays or celebrations. Is there a way
that everyone ushers in these huge seasonal changes. So as
soon as the sun rises for the first time in
a month January six fish year, um, we have a
massive sunrise festival, so everyone comes out. Only rises for
(10:50):
like maybe thirty seconds, so it's still really dark, but
everyone comes out and celebrates, and um we have like
bio works and everyone makes the d um we hang
out and yeah, because the population is very small, so
it's like three thousand people, and the same thing. In
the summer, we have like winter markets with the town.
(11:11):
So there's always like a really big celebration in the
winter and the summer, just as like, hey, this is
the longest day of the folia technically, Um, and this
is the first sunrise of the year. Let's celebrate these
things because it's amazing that we get light back all
like the light then goes away. And um, what about
(11:32):
the people there who have lived there for decades or centuries?
Have there been any ways that they've been affected by
this kind of living? Yeah, I mean, I know, maybe
not even just Canada, but across the entire circumpolar and
Circumarctic globe that does a thing called midnight summer craziness.
(11:54):
So people people do go a little bit loopylu and
in the summer just because you just don't sleep as much.
But I know that in the past, and this is
speaking just from general knowledge that people generally who were
indigenous and lived on the land were really good at
(12:15):
just following the animals and living with their families and
kids are just playing out at like five am, like
two I am because it doesn't really matter. So people
have more like a nap culture and kind of just
sleep whenever they want to. So do you feel like
you've adapted to this, like your circadian rhythm, for example,
(12:38):
has adapted to this, or is it something that's still
jarring for you after several years of living in this
actually I kind of like it. Yeah, I think I've
got used to it for sure. And what about your
sleep quality? Do you notice the difference in your sleep
when it's extended periods of sunlight versus extended periods of darkness? Definitely.
At the beginning, yeah, Like in my first maybe six
(13:00):
months here, it was pretty difficult. But then I learned
about operation Nighttime in the house. I've really taken that
to heart and employed that thoroughly. When I talked about
the challenges that Addie faces with Dr Stephen Lockley, he
reiterated the extremely important role that our eyes play and
(13:22):
what the perception of brightness or darkness does in our brains.
So the first thing to think about is what's happening
at the eye as opposed to what's happening in the environment.
It's the eye that detects the light to tell the
brain whether it's day or night, which then in turn
resets our circadian clock or twenty four hour o'clock, which
(13:44):
then in turn tells the brain went to sleep, went
to be awake, when to eat, and so on and
so forth. The environment doesn't always match what happens at
the eye. If you're in constant light, when you close
your eyes, you create a light dark cycle at the eye,
so the brain doesn't see constant light because you close
your eyes to go to sleep. So in that situation,
(14:08):
closing your eyes then helps to reset a circadian clock.
We'll be right back after a brief message from our
partners at Mattress Firm, and now back to chasing sleep.
(14:31):
Light or lack thereof, obviously plays an important role in
not just the quality of our sleep, but the timing
of it as well. We see effects on sleep from
the sun and the lights in our homes, even the
light from our cell phones. Addie has to black out
her entire home every night when it's constant daylight. So
(14:52):
what about the opposite of that, What sort of challenges
would we see in our sleep living in constant darkness.
So in modern day, obviously we have electric light, we
have man made light. In the past there may have
been firelight or gas light, and so it would be
unusual to be in complete darkness for that entire time.
(15:12):
And again, if you create a light dark cycle through
whatever source of light, you're providing a time que to
the brain to tell the brain when it's day or night. Now,
there are scenarios that are similar to what you've just described,
and for a lot of my career I've studied the
impact of blindness on circadian rhythms and sleep. Interesting. So
(15:32):
if you don't have eyes, or if you have an
eye disorder which completely stops any light perception, then your
brain is essentially in constant darkness. And in that situation,
individuals have a disorder because they can't in train, they
can't synchronize their daily clocks to a light dark cycle,
and they in fact to run on their own internal time,
(15:55):
and that causes problems when you're trying to live in
a twenty four hour world. So there are scenarios where
people do live in complete darkness, but we always have
to keep in mind what the environment is and then
what the retina and what the eye is receiving, and
so most of us still live in a light dark cycle,
even if we're at those extreme northern latitudes. M got it,
(16:18):
And I'm curious what role does melotonin playing all of this.
It seems like melotonin, from what I understand, your body
produces it based at least in part in light signals
to the brain. With internal melatonin, your natural melatonin doesn't
need light or dark to be released. It's released automatically
by the circadian clock, and so the clock sends a
(16:41):
signal to the pineal gland, which is where melatonin is
released from, and that will happen on the twenty four
hour pattern. Even though there's no light dark cycle. So
in the blind people I was talking about earlier, they
still have a daily signal or daily pattern of melatonin.
It just can't be synchronized to the light dark cycle.
But if you have eyes, if you can detect light,
(17:03):
then melatonin cycles so that it's maximum at night and
minimum in the daytime. It isn't a sleep hormone, which
sometimes people often think it is. It's a darkness hormone,
and so it tells the brain it's night now. In
humans that means go to sleep, and so melantoni means
go to sleep. In humans, dark and sleep go together.
(17:25):
And so what that Meltonian signal does it helps the
brain tell the difference between night and day. Now, if
you shine a light at your eyes at night, then
your melotonium will be stopped. So when the brain sees light,
it thinks daytime. It suppresses your melatonin. It makes you
more alert, it increases your heart rate, it increases your
(17:45):
temperature because naturally the only time you would see light
is in the daytime. So when we expose ourselves to
light at night, we're confusing the body clock, we're confusing
the brain because light means day. Another thing I wanted
to ask you at which I find really fascinating, is
there's been some literature more and more in recent years,
looking into this phenomenon of bi phasic sleeping, where you know,
(18:10):
before the dawn of electricity, people went to bed very early,
as soon as the sun set. In many cases, you know,
they may have woken up in the middle of the
night to do all sorts of things by candle light, door,
to do some agricultural work, and then would go back
to sleep until the sun came up. Do you have
any thoughts on this phenomenon. It's very interesting observation and
(18:32):
whether we've you know, what we've done to change our
our behavior in modern times. And first of all, we
have to think again about light sources. You just had
people got up to do things by candle light, well,
that wouldn't have a very big impact on your circadian
rhythms of sleep. Ah that's a good point. So even
in a bi phasic sleeping cycle, you would still need
(18:52):
a source of light for any period or being awake.
It's not like this would be effective to get up
in the middle of the night, say, and try to
be productive in complete darkness. So these are low levels
of light which have minimal impact on your circadian rhythms
and alertness. If you expose people to a longer night,
(19:12):
they're melatonin profile lengthens, and so what the Melatonian signal
does in the brain is tell the brain how long
night is. In the summer, you will have a shorter
scout period, a shorter night period, and produce melatonium for
a shorter time. Then in the winter, as you expand
the night, your melatonin profile expands and gets longer. So
(19:34):
humans still have the capability to change their biology based
on season through this change in in melatonin. And what
probably happened is if you don't have electric light to
stay up, you would go to bed earlier. You could
all try that yourselves, don't turn an electric light on
after dusk and see if you go to bed earlier.
I suspect you probably will if you've gotten nothing to
(19:55):
do but lie in bed in the dark, the chances
are you going to sleep for longer, And we override
each and every day on natural biology by having access
to light after dusk and no light after dusk is normal.
We would never see substantial amounts of light after dusk
with a natural light dog cycle. So all of it
(20:17):
is changing our biology. And in fact what's happened is
all of us are shifted later than we should be.
We all go to bed too late based on the
natural rhythms, and we all probably sleep less than we
would have done in the past, at least based on
that natural cycle. So by phasic sleeping was likely the
natural result of the day night cycle in a world
with little or no human made light sources. And as
(20:39):
we evolved and built electric light and we began using
light sources like our smartphones, we fundamentally changed our day
night cycle. I guess that really shows just how incredibly
impactful perceptions of light and dark are on our brains.
But I am curious, are there other aspects of our
(21:00):
biology that can be disrupted by these types of extreme
day night cycles? Yes, so the Cicadian clock, the twenty
our body clock, controls much more than sleep, and so
we know that the clock will control many hormones. We've
mentioned melatonin, Cortisol is another strongly circadian hormone. But the
(21:20):
patterns of your performance, your mood, your immune function, reproductive function, metabolism,
both glucose and lipid metabolism, bone metabolism, many of these
body systems are controlled by your circadian clock in the
brain and also circadian clocks that we have in the periphery.
And so if you have disruption of the clock, mainly
(21:43):
through a change in light dark cycles, then all the
other body systems that are controlled by the clock will
also be disrupted. And so if we use shift workers
as an example of cicadian disruption, we find that shift
workers have a much higher risk of things like heart disease, diabet,
eat is depression, some cancers because of these different body
(22:04):
systems that are interrupted when we try and reverse our
cycle and stay awake at night and sleep in the
day the many shift workers do. Now, if we're thinking
of an environment where the environment is twenty four hours
of light, remember again, when you go to sleep, you
close your eyes and create a light dark cycle, so
there won't necessarily be much in the way of cicadian
(22:26):
disruption if you keep a stable sleep pattern. So if
you are in Alaska and you go to bed at
the same time every night and turn the lights off,
close your eyes, put on an eyemask, and then wake
up at the same time in the morning, that will
provide the signal to the clock to keep your rhythms
properly synchronized. The other thing that people do experience, though
(22:48):
with twenty four hours sunlight is an activation. Light as
well as shifting the clock, can also be a stimulant.
It stimulates a brain, it makes you more alert, and
so sometimes people will report in the summer where they
have these very long days feeling very active, not needing
much sleep, having quite a good mood. And then when
(23:08):
we have less of that light, we may not feel
as as happy or have as much alertness. So there's
two effects of light. If you like, light synchronizes the clock,
but it also helps maintain your alertness level. The mechanisms
behind how light and darkness affects sleep are fascinating. It's
(23:29):
the retina that sends signals to the brain to release
hormones and melatonin. I wanted to get Steven's advice on
how to use this knowledge to our advantage in getting
the best sleep possible. So I asked him, what are
some things we can do to improve our own sleep,
whether we live in the Arctic Circle or in the
continental United States or anywhere else. So I think, again,
(23:53):
the key is light, and I'll keep going back to light.
But it's such a powerful biological impact on our sleep.
And so Cadian rhythms, your melotonian rhythm, your natural melatonian
rhythm comes up at about two to three hours before sleep.
And so if that melatonin rhythm is the signal of
darkness to the brain, having as much darkness as you
can two to three hours before you go to bed
(24:15):
is going to preserve that signal. You do that every day,
you will start to shift your body clock a little
bit earlier, which means you'll fall asleep a little bit quicker,
you'll have better quality sleep, you'll sleep for longer. Doing
something relaxing is of course very good to help calm
the brain down, but it needs to be something which
doesn't involve much light. If you're going to read, read
(24:37):
a real book with a dim bedside lamp. Don't read
from an iPad, don't read from a phone, don't read
from a laptop because that light is alerting you. People
find that relaxation techniques meditation, particularly yoga, can be helpful
for sleep, but again they need to be in a
dim environment if possible, a warm bath is helpful. Need
(25:00):
to lose heat in order to fall asleep, and so
warm bath or a shower again without much light, it
would be helpful. Take that time out to have that
little bit of time for yourself. Those sorts of things
will help you fall asleep. That's all for this episode.
(25:20):
Join me again next week when we learn about the
sleeping habits of the people who studies sleep itself. We
want to hear from you. Leave a rating or review
for our show on your podcast player of choice. You
can find me on Twitter at on a Hot O'Connor
Until next time, Hoping you're living your best while sleeping
your best. Chasing Sleep is a production of I Heart
(25:43):
Radio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer is
Molly Sosha. Our EP of post is James Foster. Our
supervising producer is Kia Swinton. Our producer is Sierra Kaiser.
This show is hosted by me on a Hot O'Connor
as s
When you go to a friend's for dinner and you
get talking all you go out on the land on
a boat, go outside anywhere on the walk, and you
just kind of relaxing and chilling out, and then you
get back into the house and look up clock. You're like,
oh god, it wasn't like five hours late. And then
I thought it was because the sun did not go down,
(00:31):
and I did not realize because my brain didn't tell
me that that wasn't normal. When most of us say
on top of the world, we usually mean it metaphorically,
as in being in a good mood or in a
good place. But for Addie Scott, top of the world
is a very real location that she calls home. You
(00:53):
think of like Canada and North America on a map
and go as far north as you can and west
without getting into Alaska, and you find any Addie is
a coordinator for Community Greenhouse in Inevo, Canada, a city
located in the Arctic Circle. Because of its extreme north
location and the tilt of our planet's axis, people who
(01:16):
live their experience fifty six days of continuous sunlight every
summer and about thirty days of polar night in the winter,
so in the summer, I usually just like make sure
that I try not to go outside pass like eleven PM,
and if I do, I get very confused and my
brain is like, Kate, it's time to go to work.
(01:37):
Now it's the morning. But it's great for waking up
in the morning because it's just bright all the time,
and in the winter mad it's hard to care a bit.
In most inhabited places on the planet, we can rely
on signals from the sun to let us know when
it's time to go about certain parts of our day.
So for Addie, who moved to Inuvik from Yorkshire in
(02:00):
United Kingdom, the endless days and continuous nights were something
she had to get used to. It's honestly, like I mean,
it sounds like a cliche. It's nothing I've ever experienced before,
and it's nothing I could have imagined before. It's a
very unique thing that few humans will ever witness in
their lives, and while whole populations have learned to thrive
(02:22):
in this environment, it still comes with its own set
of challenges. I also sat down with Dr Stephen Lockley,
a neuroscientist an Associate professor of medicine at Harvard University,
to talk about what these unique and extreme day and
night periods due to our minds, our bodies, and of
course our sleep. We've not evolved as humans to live
(02:45):
in constant dungness or constant light. We can override it
with the use of electric light or light avoidance in
the summer, but clearly there are still some anger effects
of the light environment. It's not exactly the same as
living further south, and so yes, we do find the
further north you go there is a bigger risk to health.
(03:05):
Despite the risk, people have figured out how to adapt,
with evidence showing that humans may have first migrated deep
into the northern hemisphere as far back as thirty thousand
years ago. Today, we're going to look at what sleep
is like in the Arctic Circle, a place with light
and dark cycles that seem alien to the rest of
the world and where the adaptability of its residents is
(03:27):
a testament to the ingenuity of the human race. On
this episode of Chasing Sleep, when the Sun doesn't sleep, Hi,
I'm on a hut O'Connor, and this is Chasing Sleep
and I heart Radio production and partnership with Mattress Firm,
(03:58):
located two miles north of Seattle, and with only one
road connecting it to the rest of the globe. A
Novic Canada is one of the most remote yet interesting
places on Earth. Most of the Arctic Circle is so
extreme that, despite some modern settlements, a lot of the
land remains completely untouched. The wildlife found here is some
(04:19):
of the most unique. The forests are dense and lush,
the waters are clear and blue, the day last an
entire season, and the nights are illuminated by the amazing
northern lights. It's basically like real life Naunia is the
best way to describe it. So after I finished my Masters,
(04:40):
I didn't know what to go, So I threw a
dot at a map and this was the closest place
that landed. So here I am doing the things. Wow,
So you really did that and decided, okay, that's where
I'm headed, And how did you figure out, you know,
how you're going to get there and prepare for it
(05:01):
and make a life there. I actually just kind of
zoomed in on Google Maps and was like, wow, it
was like really nothing there, and then kind of zoomed
in a little bit closer and then found the names
of the towns like surrounding it. And then just looked
for volunteering and job opportunities to travel and then found
a place working with sled dogs and working with them
(05:25):
and emails called them was like, hey, do you guys
have sled dog training jobs? Is that a thing? Um?
And they said yeah, And I worked for them for
like eight months, left on a road trip and then
got a job at the Greenhouse. So while it must
be pretty amazing to be surrounded by so much beauty,
how do you handle the unique times of total light
(05:46):
and dark that come with living in a NOVIC. It's
kind of amazing really, Like in the summer, it happens
so fast that you go from darkness to like twenty
four hour daylight basically. So I know, officially it's twenty
four hour daylight for one month, but the sun even
(06:06):
though it sets a little bit, it's still light for
like three months either side of that. It's really really cool.
And I don't know, you have no idea what time
is any time of day, And if you're really bad
at wearing a watchwhaw keeping your phone on you like
I am, you're just like best, but wondering the whole
time you have no idea what time is they're going
for a while with the dog. I'll hanging out with
(06:26):
some friends and you look outside and be like it's
still light. Maybe it's ten pm. Maybe I'll go to
bed it's like five am, and uh, they're like, oh,
it's the next day. Oops. So that's constant daylight and
then the opposite happens in the winter. Yeah, the winter
is twenty four or seven darkness. But it's kind of
amazing because you get the northern lights the whole time,
(06:47):
Like in the middle of the day, you'd be like
walking to work to do this, just be amazing lights
in the sky. So I think I in terms of
like sleeping, the winter is so much easier just because
it's dock all the time. It's kind of nice. But
in the summer weekly Operation Nighttime in my house because
(07:09):
you have to like just close all the windows all
the courtins, put like copboard on to block out the light.
At like ten pm, just run around the house play
Operation nighttime so you can. So I'm guessing Operation Nighttime
is a technique for adapting to the constant light. So
can you walk us through exactly what that looks like. Yeah,
So when it hits ten pm, I have a little
(07:32):
alm on my phone to remind me to do it.
Otherwise I just yeah, I have no idea that it's
that time. And then go around and we have like
black outlines on all of the windows. Um so me
and my housemates we go around and like cover room
each We just go and pull them all down. And
the most important one I always forget is to close
(07:52):
my bedroom. Could so when I go into my bedroom,
it's doc But yeah, it's just remembering to do it,
signing along and pulling those blackout clients down, making a
night time. It sounds like a great way to recreate
night and also a pretty interesting reminder of just how
important the darkness is to signaling sleep mechanisms in our brains.
(08:16):
But prepping the house is one thing. What's it like
to work in this environment? I mean, gardening is very
seasonal anyway, but it's more extreme here. So the gardening
season now like starts in May when it gets warm
enough because we just get the light back then. And
then in September is when we start to get what
(08:37):
you call it the average day with like a normal
sunset sunrise kind of thing. But that's when it starts
to get really cold here. Through the summer. It's amazing.
I'm working in the greenhouse. The plants love the twenty
four hour daylight, so I'm curious how the plants respond
over there to these periods of extended sunlight and darkness.
(08:59):
With Jesus especially, you look on the back of a
seed packet radishes would normally be like one to two
months to get a fully grown radish for the good
old salad. Here, it's like three weeks. Everything grows crazy fast, incredible.
So the plants love the summer, But what does life
look like for the people here with such dramatic shifts
(09:21):
in seasons. Honestly, do you really recognize the shift in
people's behavioral patterns? Which I find really interesting? Really, Yeah,
So in the summer, people are like active, going for
a walk. You spend like so much time on the
land and like you're out as much as you possibly
candy um, and we're in a delta here too, so
there's so much water and lakes and rivers, so people
(09:45):
are often at like and canoes on the boat, and
you just spend as much time outside as you can,
like it's amazing. And then as you like shift into
getting colder, and then in the everyone basically just hibernates
and does crafts. Does crafts. Yeah, keep yourself busy during
(10:06):
the like the winter months. That's a traditional thing as well,
Like crafts and making things is a very big winter tradition,
especially so the women appeared to because there's just less
hunting and less gathering you can do on the land.
That's true of people's like natural rhythms to when it
gets really cold outside and you're like, okay, consider the energy.
(10:29):
So what about holidays or celebrations. Is there a way
that everyone ushers in these huge seasonal changes. So as
soon as the sun rises for the first time in
a month January six fish year, um, we have a
massive sunrise festival, so everyone comes out. Only rises for
(10:50):
like maybe thirty seconds, so it's still really dark, but
everyone comes out and celebrates, and um we have like
bio works and everyone makes the d um we hang
out and yeah, because the population is very small, so
it's like three thousand people, and the same thing. In
the summer, we have like winter markets with the town.
(11:11):
So there's always like a really big celebration in the
winter and the summer, just as like, hey, this is
the longest day of the folia technically, Um, and this
is the first sunrise of the year. Let's celebrate these
things because it's amazing that we get light back all
like the light then goes away. And um, what about
(11:32):
the people there who have lived there for decades or centuries?
Have there been any ways that they've been affected by
this kind of living? Yeah, I mean, I know, maybe
not even just Canada, but across the entire circumpolar and
Circumarctic globe that does a thing called midnight summer craziness.
(11:54):
So people people do go a little bit loopylu and
in the summer just because you just don't sleep as much.
But I know that in the past, and this is
speaking just from general knowledge that people generally who were
indigenous and lived on the land were really good at
(12:15):
just following the animals and living with their families and
kids are just playing out at like five am, like
two I am because it doesn't really matter. So people
have more like a nap culture and kind of just
sleep whenever they want to. So do you feel like
you've adapted to this, like your circadian rhythm, for example,
(12:38):
has adapted to this, or is it something that's still
jarring for you after several years of living in this
actually I kind of like it. Yeah, I think I've
got used to it for sure. And what about your
sleep quality? Do you notice the difference in your sleep
when it's extended periods of sunlight versus extended periods of darkness? Definitely.
At the beginning, yeah, Like in my first maybe six
(13:00):
months here, it was pretty difficult. But then I learned
about operation Nighttime in the house. I've really taken that
to heart and employed that thoroughly. When I talked about
the challenges that Addie faces with Dr Stephen Lockley, he
reiterated the extremely important role that our eyes play and
(13:22):
what the perception of brightness or darkness does in our brains.
So the first thing to think about is what's happening
at the eye as opposed to what's happening in the environment.
It's the eye that detects the light to tell the
brain whether it's day or night, which then in turn
resets our circadian clock or twenty four hour o'clock, which
(13:44):
then in turn tells the brain went to sleep, went
to be awake, when to eat, and so on and
so forth. The environment doesn't always match what happens at
the eye. If you're in constant light, when you close
your eyes, you create a light dark cycle at the eye,
so the brain doesn't see constant light because you close
your eyes to go to sleep. So in that situation,
(14:08):
closing your eyes then helps to reset a circadian clock.
We'll be right back after a brief message from our
partners at Mattress Firm, and now back to chasing sleep.
(14:31):
Light or lack thereof, obviously plays an important role in
not just the quality of our sleep, but the timing
of it as well. We see effects on sleep from
the sun and the lights in our homes, even the
light from our cell phones. Addie has to black out
her entire home every night when it's constant daylight. So
(14:52):
what about the opposite of that, What sort of challenges
would we see in our sleep living in constant darkness.
So in modern day, obviously we have electric light, we
have man made light. In the past there may have
been firelight or gas light, and so it would be
unusual to be in complete darkness for that entire time.
(15:12):
And again, if you create a light dark cycle through
whatever source of light, you're providing a time que to
the brain to tell the brain when it's day or night. Now,
there are scenarios that are similar to what you've just described,
and for a lot of my career I've studied the
impact of blindness on circadian rhythms and sleep. Interesting. So
(15:32):
if you don't have eyes, or if you have an
eye disorder which completely stops any light perception, then your
brain is essentially in constant darkness. And in that situation,
individuals have a disorder because they can't in train, they
can't synchronize their daily clocks to a light dark cycle,
and they in fact to run on their own internal time,
(15:55):
and that causes problems when you're trying to live in
a twenty four hour world. So there are scenarios where
people do live in complete darkness, but we always have
to keep in mind what the environment is and then
what the retina and what the eye is receiving, and
so most of us still live in a light dark cycle,
even if we're at those extreme northern latitudes. M got it,
(16:18):
And I'm curious what role does melotonin playing all of this.
It seems like melotonin, from what I understand, your body
produces it based at least in part in light signals
to the brain. With internal melatonin, your natural melatonin doesn't
need light or dark to be released. It's released automatically
by the circadian clock, and so the clock sends a
(16:41):
signal to the pineal gland, which is where melatonin is
released from, and that will happen on the twenty four
hour pattern. Even though there's no light dark cycle. So
in the blind people I was talking about earlier, they
still have a daily signal or daily pattern of melatonin.
It just can't be synchronized to the light dark cycle.
But if you have eyes, if you can detect light,
(17:03):
then melatonin cycles so that it's maximum at night and
minimum in the daytime. It isn't a sleep hormone, which
sometimes people often think it is. It's a darkness hormone,
and so it tells the brain it's night now. In
humans that means go to sleep, and so melantoni means
go to sleep. In humans, dark and sleep go together.
(17:25):
And so what that Meltonian signal does it helps the
brain tell the difference between night and day. Now, if
you shine a light at your eyes at night, then
your melotonium will be stopped. So when the brain sees light,
it thinks daytime. It suppresses your melatonin. It makes you
more alert, it increases your heart rate, it increases your
(17:45):
temperature because naturally the only time you would see light
is in the daytime. So when we expose ourselves to
light at night, we're confusing the body clock, we're confusing
the brain because light means day. Another thing I wanted
to ask you at which I find really fascinating, is
there's been some literature more and more in recent years,
looking into this phenomenon of bi phasic sleeping, where you know,
(18:10):
before the dawn of electricity, people went to bed very early,
as soon as the sun set. In many cases, you know,
they may have woken up in the middle of the
night to do all sorts of things by candle light, door,
to do some agricultural work, and then would go back
to sleep until the sun came up. Do you have
any thoughts on this phenomenon. It's very interesting observation and
(18:32):
whether we've you know, what we've done to change our
our behavior in modern times. And first of all, we
have to think again about light sources. You just had
people got up to do things by candle light, well,
that wouldn't have a very big impact on your circadian
rhythms of sleep. Ah that's a good point. So even
in a bi phasic sleeping cycle, you would still need
(18:52):
a source of light for any period or being awake.
It's not like this would be effective to get up
in the middle of the night, say, and try to
be productive in complete darkness. So these are low levels
of light which have minimal impact on your circadian rhythms
and alertness. If you expose people to a longer night,
(19:12):
they're melatonin profile lengthens, and so what the Melatonian signal
does in the brain is tell the brain how long
night is. In the summer, you will have a shorter
scout period, a shorter night period, and produce melatonium for
a shorter time. Then in the winter, as you expand
the night, your melatonin profile expands and gets longer. So
(19:34):
humans still have the capability to change their biology based
on season through this change in in melatonin. And what
probably happened is if you don't have electric light to
stay up, you would go to bed earlier. You could
all try that yourselves, don't turn an electric light on
after dusk and see if you go to bed earlier.
I suspect you probably will if you've gotten nothing to
(19:55):
do but lie in bed in the dark, the chances
are you going to sleep for longer, And we override
each and every day on natural biology by having access
to light after dusk and no light after dusk is normal.
We would never see substantial amounts of light after dusk
with a natural light dog cycle. So all of it
(20:17):
is changing our biology. And in fact what's happened is
all of us are shifted later than we should be.
We all go to bed too late based on the
natural rhythms, and we all probably sleep less than we
would have done in the past, at least based on
that natural cycle. So by phasic sleeping was likely the
natural result of the day night cycle in a world
with little or no human made light sources. And as
(20:39):
we evolved and built electric light and we began using
light sources like our smartphones, we fundamentally changed our day
night cycle. I guess that really shows just how incredibly
impactful perceptions of light and dark are on our brains.
But I am curious, are there other aspects of our
(21:00):
biology that can be disrupted by these types of extreme
day night cycles? Yes, so the Cicadian clock, the twenty
our body clock, controls much more than sleep, and so
we know that the clock will control many hormones. We've
mentioned melatonin, Cortisol is another strongly circadian hormone. But the
(21:20):
patterns of your performance, your mood, your immune function, reproductive function, metabolism,
both glucose and lipid metabolism, bone metabolism, many of these
body systems are controlled by your circadian clock in the
brain and also circadian clocks that we have in the periphery.
And so if you have disruption of the clock, mainly
(21:43):
through a change in light dark cycles, then all the
other body systems that are controlled by the clock will
also be disrupted. And so if we use shift workers
as an example of cicadian disruption, we find that shift
workers have a much higher risk of things like heart disease, diabet,
eat is depression, some cancers because of these different body
(22:04):
systems that are interrupted when we try and reverse our
cycle and stay awake at night and sleep in the
day the many shift workers do. Now, if we're thinking
of an environment where the environment is twenty four hours
of light, remember again, when you go to sleep, you
close your eyes and create a light dark cycle, so
there won't necessarily be much in the way of cicadian
(22:26):
disruption if you keep a stable sleep pattern. So if
you are in Alaska and you go to bed at
the same time every night and turn the lights off,
close your eyes, put on an eyemask, and then wake
up at the same time in the morning, that will
provide the signal to the clock to keep your rhythms
properly synchronized. The other thing that people do experience, though
(22:48):
with twenty four hours sunlight is an activation. Light as
well as shifting the clock, can also be a stimulant.
It stimulates a brain, it makes you more alert, and
so sometimes people will report in the summer where they
have these very long days feeling very active, not needing
much sleep, having quite a good mood. And then when
(23:08):
we have less of that light, we may not feel
as as happy or have as much alertness. So there's
two effects of light. If you like, light synchronizes the clock,
but it also helps maintain your alertness level. The mechanisms
behind how light and darkness affects sleep are fascinating. It's
(23:29):
the retina that sends signals to the brain to release
hormones and melatonin. I wanted to get Steven's advice on
how to use this knowledge to our advantage in getting
the best sleep possible. So I asked him, what are
some things we can do to improve our own sleep,
whether we live in the Arctic Circle or in the
continental United States or anywhere else. So I think, again,
(23:53):
the key is light, and I'll keep going back to light.
But it's such a powerful biological impact on our sleep.
And so Cadian rhythms, your melotonian rhythm, your natural melatonian
rhythm comes up at about two to three hours before sleep.
And so if that melatonin rhythm is the signal of
darkness to the brain, having as much darkness as you
can two to three hours before you go to bed
(24:15):
is going to preserve that signal. You do that every day,
you will start to shift your body clock a little
bit earlier, which means you'll fall asleep a little bit quicker,
you'll have better quality sleep, you'll sleep for longer. Doing
something relaxing is of course very good to help calm
the brain down, but it needs to be something which
doesn't involve much light. If you're going to read, read
(24:37):
a real book with a dim bedside lamp. Don't read
from an iPad, don't read from a phone, don't read
from a laptop because that light is alerting you. People
find that relaxation techniques meditation, particularly yoga, can be helpful
for sleep, but again they need to be in a
dim environment if possible, a warm bath is helpful. Need
(25:00):
to lose heat in order to fall asleep, and so
warm bath or a shower again without much light, it
would be helpful. Take that time out to have that
little bit of time for yourself. Those sorts of things
will help you fall asleep. That's all for this episode.
(25:20):
Join me again next week when we learn about the
sleeping habits of the people who studies sleep itself. We
want to hear from you. Leave a rating or review
for our show on your podcast player of choice. You
can find me on Twitter at on a Hot O'Connor
Until next time, Hoping you're living your best while sleeping
your best. Chasing Sleep is a production of I Heart
(25:43):
Radio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer is
Molly Sosha. Our EP of post is James Foster. Our
supervising producer is Kia Swinton. Our producer is Sierra Kaiser.
This show is hosted by me on a Hot O'Connor
as s
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