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.
To learn more, visit: mattressfirm.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
When you go to a friend's for dinner and you
get talking, or you go out on the land on
a boat, or go outside anywhere on a walk and
you just kind of relaxing and chilling out, and then
you get back into the house.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And look at a clock. You're like, oh god, it
was like five hours late.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And then I thought it was because the sun did
not go down, and I did not realize because my
brain didn't tell me that that wasn't normal.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
You 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 Anyuvik.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Addie is a coordinator for Community Greenhouse in Innovook, Canada,
a city located in the Arctic Circle. Because of its
extreme north location and the tilt of our planet's axis,
people who live there experience fifty six days of continuous
sunlight every summer and about thirty days of polar night
in the winter.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So in the summer, I usually just like make sure
that I try not to.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Go outside past like eleven PM.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And if I do, I get very confused and my
brain's like, Kate, it's time to go to work.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Now it's the morning.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
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 hot to care a bit.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
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 Nuvik from Yorkshire, United Kingdom,
the endless days and continuous nights were something she had
to get used to.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's a very unique thing that few humans will ever
witness in their lives, and while whole populations have learned
to thrive in this environment, it still comes with its
own set of challenges. I also sat down with doctor
Stephen Lockley, a neuroscientist an Associate professor of medicine at
Harvard University to talk about what these unique and extreme
(02:36):
day and night periods due to our minds, our bodies,
and of course are sleep.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
We've not evolved as humans to live in constant darkness
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
(03:02):
there is a bigger risk to health.
Speaker 3 (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 Anahad O'Connor, and this is Chasing Sleep and iHeartRadio
production and partnership with Mattress Firm located two thousand miles
(04:00):
north of Seattle, and with only one road connecting it
to the rest of the globe. Nuvik, 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 of the most unique.
(04:21):
The forests are dense and lush, the waters are clear
and blue, the day lasts an entire season, and the
nights are illuminated by the amazing northern lights.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
It's basically like real life Nannia is the best way
to describe it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So after I.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Finished my masts, I didn't know where to go, so
I threw a dot at a map and this was
the closest place it landed.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So here I am doing the things.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Wow, So you really did that and decided, Okay, that's
where I'm headed, And how did you figure out how
you were going to get there and prepare for it
and make a life there.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I actually just kind of zoomed in on Google Maps
and was like, wow, there's 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 like volunteering and job opportunities
to travel and then found a place working with sled
dogs and working with them and email called them was like.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Hey, do you guys have sled dog training jobs? Is
that a thing?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So while it must be pretty amazing to be surrounded
by so much beauty, how do you handle the unique
times of total light and dark that come with living
in Annivik.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
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 though it sets a little bit, is still light
(06:09):
for like three months either side of that.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
It's really really cool.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
And I don't know, you have no idea what time
it is any time of day, and if you're really
bad at wearing a watchhalk keeping your phone on you
like I am, you're just like Beth but wondering the
whole time. You have no idea what time is going
for a walk with the dog. I'll hanging out with
some friends and you'll 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,
(06:33):
it's the next day.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Oops.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So that's constant daylight and then the opposite happens in
the winter.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, the winter is twenty four to seven darkness. But
it's kind of amazing because you get the northern lights
the whole time, Like in the middle of the day,
you'll be like walking to work to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Is amazing lights in the sky. Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So I think I in terms of like sleeping, the
winter is so much easier just because it's dark all
the time.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It's kind of nice. But in the summer, we play
Operation Nighttime in my house.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Because you guys have to like just close all the windows,
all the cuts, put like copboard onto block out the light.
At like ten pm, just run around the house play
Operation Nighttime so you can sell my God.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, So when it hits ten pm. I have a
little alarm on my phone to remind me to do it.
Otherwise I just yeah, I have no idea that it's
that time.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And then go around and we have like blackoutlines on all.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Of the windows, 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 my bedroom cuts.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So when I go into my bedroom, it's dark.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
But yeah, it's just remembering to do it, sitting a
long and pulling those blackout clients down, making a night time.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
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. But
prepping the house is one thing. What's it like to
work in this environment?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I mean, gardening is very seasonal anyway, but it's more
extreme here. So the gardening season now starts in May
when it gets warm.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Enough because we just get the light back then.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And then in September is when we start to get
what you call 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 really crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So I'm curious how the plants respond over there to
these periods of extended sunlight and darkness.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Veggies especially.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
You'll look on the back of a seed packet radish
does normally be like one to two months to get
a fully grown radish for the good old salad.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Here it's like three weeks. Wow, everything grows crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Fast, incredible. So the plants love the summer, But what
does life look like for the people here with such
dramatic shifts and seasons.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Honestly, you really recognize the shift in people's like behavioral.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Patterns, which I find really interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Really.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
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, And we're in a delta here too, so
there's so much water and lakes and rivers, so people
are often at like in canoes on a boat, and
(09:49):
you just spend as much time outside as you can
all like, yeah, it's amazing. And then as you like
shift into getting colder and then in the so everyone
basically just hibernates and.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Does crafts, does crafts.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, keep yourself busy during the like the winter months.
That's a traditional thing as well, Like crafts and making
things is a very big winter tradition, especially for the
women appear too, because there's just less hunting and less
gathering you can do on the land. That's true of
people's like natural rhythms too. When it gets really cold outside,
(10:27):
you're like, okay, conserve the energy.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So what about holidays or celebrations. Is there a way
that everyone ushers in these huge seasonal changes.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
So as soon as the sun rises for the first
time in a month January sixth this year, and we
have a massive sunrise festival, so everyone comes out. Only
rises for like maybe thirty seconds, so it's still really dark,
but everyone comes out and celebrates and we have like
(10:57):
fireworks and everyone makes food and 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. So there's always
like a really big celebration in the winter and the
summer just of like hey, this is the longest day
(11:18):
of the whole year technically, and this is the first.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Sunrise of the year.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Let's celebrate these things because it's amazing that we get
light back all like the light then goes away.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
And what about the people there who've lived there for
decades or centuries. Have there been any ways that they've
been affected by this kind of living?
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, I mean, I know, maybe not even just Canada,
but across the entire like circumpolar and circum Arctic globe
that does a thing called midnight summer craziness.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So people people do.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Go a little bit lupylo 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 just following the
(12:18):
animals and living with their families and kids are just
playing out at like five am, like two am because
it doesn't really matter. So people have more of like
a nap culture and kind of just sleep whenever.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They want to.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
So do you feel like you've adapted to this, like
your circadian rhythm, for example, has adapted to this, or
is it something that's still jarring for you after several years.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Of living in this Actually I kind of like it. Yeah,
I think you've got used to it for sure.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
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?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Definitely.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
At the beginning, Yeah, Like in my first maybe six
months here, it was pretty difficult. But then I learned
about operation Nighttime in the house. I've like really taken
that to heart and employed that thoroughly.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
When I talked about the challenges that Addie faces with
doctor Stephen Lockley, he reiterated the extremely important role that
our eyes play and what the perception of brightness or
darkness does in our brains.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
So the first thing to think about is what's happening
at the eye as opposed to what's happened 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 clock, which
then in turn tells the brain when to sleep, when
to be awake, when to eat, and so on and
(13:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
To go to sleep.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
So in that situation, closing your eyes then helps to
reset our Cicadian clock.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
We'll be right back after a brief message from our
partners at Mattress Firm, and now back to chasing sleep.
Light or lack thereof, obviously plays an important role in
(14:35):
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
what about the opposite of that, What sort of challenges
would we see in our sleep living in constant darkness.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
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. And again,
if you create a light dark cycle through whatever source
of light, you're providing a time queue to the brain
to tell the brain when it's day or night. Now,
(15:22):
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 Cicadian rhythms and sleep.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
So 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 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.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Got it, And I'm curious what role does melotonin play
in all of this. It seems like melatonin, from what
I understand, your body produces it based at least in
part in light signals to the brain.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
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 signal to the pineal gland,
which is where melatonin is released from, and that will
happen on a twenty four hour pattern even though there's
no light dark cycle. So in the blind people I
(16:52):
was talking about earlier, they still have a daily signal
or a daily pattern of melotonin. It just can't be
synchronized to the light dark cycle. But if you have eyes,
if you can detect light, 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.
(17:12):
It's a darkness hormone, and so it tells the brain
it's night now. In humans, that means go to sleep,
and so melatonin means go to sleep. In humans, dark
and sleep go together. And so what that melatonin signal
does it helps the brain tell the difference between night
and day. Now, if you shine a light at your
(17:32):
eyes at night, then your melatonin 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 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
(17:53):
the body clock, we're confusing the brain because light means day.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Another thing I wanted to ask you, 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, 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
(18:19):
of things by candlelight, or 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.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
It's very interesting observation and whether we've you know, what
we've done to change our behavior in modern times. And
first of all, we have to think again about light sources.
You just said people got up to do things by
candle light, Well, that wouldn't have a very big impact
on your Cicadan rhythms.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Or sleep.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Ah, that's a good point. So even in a bi
phasic sleeping cycle, you would still need 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.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
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, their melatonin profile lengthens, And
so what the melatonin signal does in the brain is
tell the brain how long night is. In the summer,
you will have a shorter scoto period, a shorter night period,
(19:25):
and produce melatonin for a shorter time. Then in the winter,
as you expand the night, your melatonin profile expands and
gets longer. So humans still have the capability to change
their biology based on season through this change in melatonin.
And what probably happened is if you don't have electric
light to stay up, you would go to bed earlier.
(19:47):
You could all try that yourselves, don't turn an electric
light on after dusk and see if you go to
bed earlier. I suspects you probably will if you've gotten
nothing to do but lie in bed in the dark,
the chances are you're 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
(20:09):
dusk is normal. We would never see substantial amounts of
light after dusk with a natural light dark cycle. So
all of it 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.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So bi 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 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
(20:53):
light and dark are on our brains. But I am curious,
are there other aspects of our biology that can be
disrupted by these types of extreme day night cycles.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Yes, so the Cicadian clock, the twenty four hour 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 patterns of your performance,
your mood, your immune function, reproductive function, metabolism, both glucose
(21:28):
and lipid metabolism, bone metabolism, many of these body systems
are controlled by your cicadian clock in the brain and
also cicadian clocks that we have in the periphery. And
so if you have disruption of the clock, mainly through
a change in light dark cycles, then all the other
body systems that are controlled by the clock will also
(21:48):
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 systems that are interrupted. When we try and reverse
our cycle, then stay awake at night and sleep in
(22:09):
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
circadian disruption if you keep a stable sleep pattern. So
(22:31):
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
with twenty four hours sunlight is an activation. Light, as
(22:52):
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
we have less of that light, we may not feel
as happy or have as much alertness. So there's two
(23:14):
effects of light. If you like, light synchronizes the clock,
but it also helps maintain your alertness level.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
The mechanisms behind how light and darkness affects sleep are fascinating.
It's the retina that sends signals to the brain to
release hormones and melotonin. 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,
(23:46):
whether we live in the Arctic Circle or in the
continental the United States or anywhere else.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
So I think again, the key is light, and I
keep going back to light. But it's such a powerful
biological impact on our sleep. Cadian rhythms, your melotonin rhythm,
your natural melotonin rhythm comes up at about two to
three hours before sleep. And so if that melotonin rhythm
is the signal of darkness to the brain, having as
much darkness as you can two to three hours before
(24:15):
you go to bed is going to preserve that signal.
You do that every day, you'll 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
(24:36):
you're going to read, read 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
(24:58):
warm bath is helpful. Need 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.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
That's all for this episode. 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 a review for our show on your
podcast player of choice. You can find me on Twitter
at Anahad O'Connor. Until next time, Hoping you're living your
best while sleeping your best. Chasing Sleep is a production
(25:42):
of iHeartRadio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer
is Molly Sosha. Our EP of post is James Foster.
Our supervising producer is Keia Swinton. Our producer is Sierra Kaiser.
This show is hosted by me Anahad O'Connor.
When you go to a friend's for dinner and you
get talking, or you go out on the land on
a boat, or go outside anywhere on a walk and
you just kind of relaxing and chilling out, and then
you get back into the house.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And look at a clock. You're like, oh god, it
was like five hours late.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And then I thought it was because the sun did
not go down, and I did not realize because my
brain didn't tell me that that wasn't normal.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
You 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 Anyuvik.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Addie is a coordinator for Community Greenhouse in Innovook, Canada,
a city located in the Arctic Circle. Because of its
extreme north location and the tilt of our planet's axis,
people who live there experience fifty six days of continuous
sunlight every summer and about thirty days of polar night
in the winter.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So in the summer, I usually just like make sure
that I try not to.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Go outside past like eleven PM.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
And if I do, I get very confused and my
brain's like, Kate, it's time to go to work.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Now it's the morning.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
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 hot to care a bit.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
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 Nuvik from Yorkshire, United Kingdom,
the endless days and continuous nights were something she had
to get used to.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's a very unique thing that few humans will ever
witness in their lives, and while whole populations have learned
to thrive in this environment, it still comes with its
own set of challenges. I also sat down with doctor
Stephen Lockley, a neuroscientist an Associate professor of medicine at
Harvard University to talk about what these unique and extreme
(02:36):
day and night periods due to our minds, our bodies,
and of course are sleep.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
We've not evolved as humans to live in constant darkness
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
(03:02):
there is a bigger risk to health.
Speaker 3 (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 Anahad O'Connor, and this is Chasing Sleep and iHeartRadio
production and partnership with Mattress Firm located two thousand miles
(04:00):
north of Seattle, and with only one road connecting it
to the rest of the globe. Nuvik, 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 of the most unique.
(04:21):
The forests are dense and lush, the waters are clear
and blue, the day lasts an entire season, and the
nights are illuminated by the amazing northern lights.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
It's basically like real life Nannia is the best way
to describe it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So after I.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Finished my masts, I didn't know where to go, so
I threw a dot at a map and this was
the closest place it landed.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So here I am doing the things.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Wow, So you really did that and decided, Okay, that's
where I'm headed, And how did you figure out how
you were going to get there and prepare for it
and make a life there.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I actually just kind of zoomed in on Google Maps
and was like, wow, there's 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 like volunteering and job opportunities
to travel and then found a place working with sled
dogs and working with them and email called them was like.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Hey, do you guys have sled dog training jobs? Is
that a thing?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So while it must be pretty amazing to be surrounded
by so much beauty, how do you handle the unique
times of total light and dark that come with living
in Annivik.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
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 though it sets a little bit, is still light
(06:09):
for like three months either side of that.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
It's really really cool.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
And I don't know, you have no idea what time
it is any time of day, and if you're really
bad at wearing a watchhalk keeping your phone on you
like I am, you're just like Beth but wondering the
whole time. You have no idea what time is going
for a walk with the dog. I'll hanging out with
some friends and you'll 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,
(06:33):
it's the next day.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Oops.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So that's constant daylight and then the opposite happens in
the winter.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, the winter is twenty four to seven darkness. But
it's kind of amazing because you get the northern lights
the whole time, Like in the middle of the day,
you'll be like walking to work to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Is amazing lights in the sky. Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So I think I in terms of like sleeping, the
winter is so much easier just because it's dark all
the time.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It's kind of nice. But in the summer, we play
Operation Nighttime in my house.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Because you guys have to like just close all the windows,
all the cuts, put like copboard onto block out the light.
At like ten pm, just run around the house play
Operation Nighttime so you can sell my God.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, So when it hits ten pm. I have a
little alarm on my phone to remind me to do it.
Otherwise I just yeah, I have no idea that it's
that time.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And then go around and we have like blackoutlines on all.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Of the windows, 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 my bedroom cuts.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So when I go into my bedroom, it's dark.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
But yeah, it's just remembering to do it, sitting a
long and pulling those blackout clients down, making a night time.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
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. But
prepping the house is one thing. What's it like to
work in this environment?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I mean, gardening is very seasonal anyway, but it's more
extreme here. So the gardening season now starts in May
when it gets warm.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Enough because we just get the light back then.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And then in September is when we start to get
what you call 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 really crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So I'm curious how the plants respond over there to
these periods of extended sunlight and darkness.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Veggies especially.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
You'll look on the back of a seed packet radish
does normally be like one to two months to get
a fully grown radish for the good old salad.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Here it's like three weeks. Wow, everything grows crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Fast, incredible. So the plants love the summer, But what
does life look like for the people here with such
dramatic shifts and seasons.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Honestly, you really recognize the shift in people's like behavioral.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Patterns, which I find really interesting.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Really.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
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, And we're in a delta here too, so
there's so much water and lakes and rivers, so people
are often at like in canoes on a boat, and
(09:49):
you just spend as much time outside as you can
all like, yeah, it's amazing. And then as you like
shift into getting colder and then in the so everyone
basically just hibernates and.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Does crafts, does crafts.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, keep yourself busy during the like the winter months.
That's a traditional thing as well, Like crafts and making
things is a very big winter tradition, especially for the
women appear too, because there's just less hunting and less
gathering you can do on the land. That's true of
people's like natural rhythms too. When it gets really cold outside,
(10:27):
you're like, okay, conserve the energy.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So what about holidays or celebrations. Is there a way
that everyone ushers in these huge seasonal changes.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
So as soon as the sun rises for the first
time in a month January sixth this year, and we
have a massive sunrise festival, so everyone comes out. Only
rises for like maybe thirty seconds, so it's still really dark,
but everyone comes out and celebrates and we have like
(10:57):
fireworks and everyone makes food and 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. So there's always
like a really big celebration in the winter and the
summer just of like hey, this is the longest day
(11:18):
of the whole year technically, and this is the first.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Sunrise of the year.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Let's celebrate these things because it's amazing that we get
light back all like the light then goes away.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
And what about the people there who've lived there for
decades or centuries. Have there been any ways that they've
been affected by this kind of living?
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, I mean, I know, maybe not even just Canada,
but across the entire like circumpolar and circum Arctic globe
that does a thing called midnight summer craziness.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So people people do.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Go a little bit lupylo 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 just following the
(12:18):
animals and living with their families and kids are just
playing out at like five am, like two am because
it doesn't really matter. So people have more of like
a nap culture and kind of just sleep whenever.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They want to.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
So do you feel like you've adapted to this, like
your circadian rhythm, for example, has adapted to this, or
is it something that's still jarring for you after several years.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Of living in this Actually I kind of like it. Yeah,
I think you've got used to it for sure.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
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?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Definitely.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
At the beginning, Yeah, Like in my first maybe six
months here, it was pretty difficult. But then I learned
about operation Nighttime in the house. I've like really taken
that to heart and employed that thoroughly.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
When I talked about the challenges that Addie faces with
doctor Stephen Lockley, he reiterated the extremely important role that
our eyes play and what the perception of brightness or
darkness does in our brains.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
So the first thing to think about is what's happening
at the eye as opposed to what's happened 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 clock, which
then in turn tells the brain when to sleep, when
to be awake, when to eat, and so on and
(13:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
To go to sleep.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
So in that situation, closing your eyes then helps to
reset our Cicadian clock.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
We'll be right back after a brief message from our
partners at Mattress Firm, and now back to chasing sleep.
Light or lack thereof, obviously plays an important role in
(14:35):
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
what about the opposite of that, What sort of challenges
would we see in our sleep living in constant darkness.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
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. And again,
if you create a light dark cycle through whatever source
of light, you're providing a time queue to the brain
to tell the brain when it's day or night. Now,
(15:22):
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 Cicadian rhythms and sleep.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
So 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 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.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Got it, And I'm curious what role does melotonin play
in all of this. It seems like melatonin, from what
I understand, your body produces it based at least in
part in light signals to the brain.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
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 signal to the pineal gland,
which is where melatonin is released from, and that will
happen on a twenty four hour pattern even though there's
no light dark cycle. So in the blind people I
(16:52):
was talking about earlier, they still have a daily signal
or a daily pattern of melotonin. It just can't be
synchronized to the light dark cycle. But if you have eyes,
if you can detect light, 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.
(17:12):
It's a darkness hormone, and so it tells the brain
it's night now. In humans, that means go to sleep,
and so melatonin means go to sleep. In humans, dark
and sleep go together. And so what that melatonin signal
does it helps the brain tell the difference between night
and day. Now, if you shine a light at your
(17:32):
eyes at night, then your melatonin 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 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
(17:53):
the body clock, we're confusing the brain because light means day.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Another thing I wanted to ask you, 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, 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
(18:19):
of things by candlelight, or 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.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
It's very interesting observation and whether we've you know, what
we've done to change our behavior in modern times. And
first of all, we have to think again about light sources.
You just said people got up to do things by
candle light, Well, that wouldn't have a very big impact
on your Cicadan rhythms.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Or sleep.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Ah, that's a good point. So even in a bi
phasic sleeping cycle, you would still need 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.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
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, their melatonin profile lengthens, And
so what the melatonin signal does in the brain is
tell the brain how long night is. In the summer,
you will have a shorter scoto period, a shorter night period,
(19:25):
and produce melatonin for a shorter time. Then in the winter,
as you expand the night, your melatonin profile expands and
gets longer. So humans still have the capability to change
their biology based on season through this change in melatonin.
And what probably happened is if you don't have electric
light to stay up, you would go to bed earlier.
(19:47):
You could all try that yourselves, don't turn an electric
light on after dusk and see if you go to
bed earlier. I suspects you probably will if you've gotten
nothing to do but lie in bed in the dark,
the chances are you're 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
(20:09):
dusk is normal. We would never see substantial amounts of
light after dusk with a natural light dark cycle. So
all of it 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.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So bi 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 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
(20:53):
light and dark are on our brains. But I am curious,
are there other aspects of our biology that can be
disrupted by these types of extreme day night cycles.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Yes, so the Cicadian clock, the twenty four hour 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 patterns of your performance,
your mood, your immune function, reproductive function, metabolism, both glucose
(21:28):
and lipid metabolism, bone metabolism, many of these body systems
are controlled by your cicadian clock in the brain and
also cicadian clocks that we have in the periphery. And
so if you have disruption of the clock, mainly through
a change in light dark cycles, then all the other
body systems that are controlled by the clock will also
(21:48):
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 systems that are interrupted. When we try and reverse
our cycle, then stay awake at night and sleep in
(22:09):
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
circadian disruption if you keep a stable sleep pattern. So
(22:31):
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
with twenty four hours sunlight is an activation. Light, as
(22:52):
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
we have less of that light, we may not feel
as happy or have as much alertness. So there's two
(23:14):
effects of light. If you like, light synchronizes the clock,
but it also helps maintain your alertness level.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
The mechanisms behind how light and darkness affects sleep are fascinating.
It's the retina that sends signals to the brain to
release hormones and melotonin. 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,
(23:46):
whether we live in the Arctic Circle or in the
continental the United States or anywhere else.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
So I think again, the key is light, and I
keep going back to light. But it's such a powerful
biological impact on our sleep. Cadian rhythms, your melotonin rhythm,
your natural melotonin rhythm comes up at about two to
three hours before sleep. And so if that melotonin rhythm
is the signal of darkness to the brain, having as
much darkness as you can two to three hours before
(24:15):
you go to bed is going to preserve that signal.
You do that every day, you'll 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
(24:36):
you're going to read, read 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
(24:58):
warm bath is helpful. Need 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.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
That's all for this episode. 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 a review for our show on your
podcast player of choice. You can find me on Twitter
at Anahad O'Connor. Until next time, Hoping you're living your
best while sleeping your best. Chasing Sleep is a production
(25:42):
of iHeartRadio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer
is Molly Sosha. Our EP of post is James Foster.
Our supervising producer is Keia Swinton. Our producer is Sierra Kaiser.
This show is hosted by me Anahad O'Connor.
Popular Podcasts
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.