Hate waking up in the mornings? This is how you can change that

Have you ever wondered why you always hit the snooze button for an extra 15 to 30 minutes of sleep in the morning?

It's because our sleep/wake cycle or 'circadian rhythm' is not naturally in sync with our artificial clock or the natural one.

Instead, it is a little slower, running for 24 hours and 30 minutes on average, says global lighting major Philips in a whitepaper on the subject. This, it says, means we are naturally inclined to sleep and wake 30 minutes later each day.

If this slower rhythm is not regulated then by the end of the week our sleep/wake cycle could be off by more than two hours and we would be hitting that snooze button quite frequently, it adds. But how do we regulate it - without using the despised alarm clocks, that is?

Light scientists may have actually come up with a solution for that one.

Exposure to blue-rich morning light can speed up our circadian rhythm to wake us up earlier and improve the daily functioning of people with an early morning lifestyle, says Philips.

Lighting expert Professor Derk Jan Dijk, University of Surrey, adds: "Dimming lights a few hours before bedtime facilitates a more rapid onset to sleep and it will prevent your body clock from being shifted to later hours. If you want to shift your clock to earlier hours it is good to be exposed to light and specifically high intensity blue-rich light, when you wake up."

In the whitepaper, Philips compiles key insights from over 10 years of ongoing research about the effect of light on our 'circadian rhythm'.

It maintains that the amount and quality of light we are exposed to every day may be responsible for our Sunday morning blues. Indeed, light ultimately dictates whether we are a morning person or a night owl.

Lighting, whether natural or artificial, affects all life on our planet. In humans, it plays a crucial role in regulating our circadian rhythm, one of our natural biorhythms otherwise known as the body clock, it says.

Regulating our circadian rhythm

Alarm clocks offer one way to manage the time lag created by our naturally slower circadian rhythm. But Philips says it has recently discovered that a specific quality of light hitting the photoreceptors in our eyes not only regulates our internal body clock, but can actually reset it every single day.

For millennia, we like many animals, have used the rising and setting sun to regulate our body clock without realising it. Today, high intensity artificial blue-rich light is also capable of resetting our body clock because of its qualitative resemblance to natural morning light.

As we have a natural tendency to sleep in, our modern 9-to-5 lifestyle means we may be getting too little sleep during the working week and lying in at the weekends. Longer sleep at the weekend may compensate for the lack of rest during the week, but can reset a later circadian rhythm the following week, resulting in that 'Sunday morning blues' feeling.

"The message from nature is clear," says Luc Schlangen, Light and Sleep Scientist at Philips Research. "Our bodies have evolved a kind of steering wheel, constantly adjusting the sleep-wake cycle, driven by light, allowing us to adapt to the differing daylight lengths during the seasons. We can help regulate our body clock through lighting by providing light injections at appropriate times, for instance through brighter office lighting on Sunday mornings."

So, if you want to 'love' waking up in the mornings, do the following two things: First, dim the lights for a few hours before bedtime. And second, set a timer on a rich-blue light for the time you're supposed to wake up every morning. You will wake up more cheerful, or so says Philips.
 

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