Circadian Rhythms and Health | S1E3 (E003)
Expanding on the last episode, we dive deep into all the areas that our Circadian Rhythm touches regarding our physical and mental health. We talk about how the power of light (yes that free stuff from the sun) can enhance our health if we know how to time our exposure to the right forms of light. We also share some surprising things you may not know. Listen in!
In This Episode
Circadian Rhythms manage more than just jetlag (01:08)
Zeitgebers (03:03)
Melatonin production (05:42)
Blue light blocking glasses (11:19)
Blood sugar regulation (16:06)
Seasonal Affective Disorder (17:45)
Full-spectrum lamps (20:01)
Resources mentioned
Sunlight Inside Lamps (Use code TOREA for -10%)
Blue Light Blockers (Use code restored10 for -10%)
Study on melatonin suppression in children
Join the Optimized Wellness Community
Submit your question for the show!
Transcript
Toréa Rodriguez 0:08
Welcome to the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. I am your host, Toréa Rodriguez. And I'm joined by the lovely co host, Evie Takacs. Both of us our Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioners and we love working with women from all over the world, through our virtual programs, helping women not only feel better, but actually achieve that vibrant, no holds barred version of themselves they've been missing for a long time, and how we actually get there. Well, that is what this show is all about. Now, please keep in mind that this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. And if you like what you hear today, we would love for you to hit that follow button, leave a review in Apple podcast, share with your friends and keep coming back for more. Let's start today's adventure, shall we?
Okay, welcome back, everybody. Today we are going to be talking about one of our favorite topics that Evie and I talk about, which is a circadian rhythm and why circadian rhythm is so important to health. There's so many different reasons and a lot of ways that we can take this. I'll always ask me, like, when did you discover that circadian rhythm was like a thing we needed to pay attention to other than jetlag?
Evie Takacs 1:34
Yeah. I would say probably similar to what we talked about last episode of You know, when I started doing morning routines, and really getting into the healthy habits and building habits, it was around that time where I wanted to get out and go for a walk because I feel better when I get up and get moving. But then I learned more about circadian rhythm and how light exposure in the morning can really impact how the rest of your day goes to come back to your sleep. And so then I started getting really interested in that. So I'd say it's been about three going on four years where I've paid attention to that and strategically been doing things for my circadian rhythm.
Toréa Rodriguez 2:10
Yeah, I would say it's probably about the same, like when I was flying as a professional pilot. And, you know, previously, it was really all about managing your time zones, managing jetlag, you know, really paying attention to what could you do to help shift that kind of stuff so that you could be more of a human and less of a zombie. But when I got into, you know, my own healing journey, and discovered that there are certain biological cues that happen that are external to us in our environment that have a huge impact on our health. That's when I started learning about circadian rhythm. I also came across this article and conversation with a friend of mine, Christopher Kelly, and, and the term is Zeitgeber. Have you ever heard the term Zeitgeber?
Evie Takacs 3:00
I have not
Toréa Rodriguez 3:03
So Zeitgeber it's a it's a German term. And really, that is the meaning of the word is defined as like external influence, right, these are the external influences. And Zeitgebers are basically biological rhythms, right, so these cycles that are related to our sleep, or waking our mood, our cognitive performance, and it's all related to the body's internal clock. So there's a whole list of these different influences, like the seasons and temperature, right can influence the way that our metabolism runs, for example, social interactions that we're having. So as a human, we tend to have social interactions during the day and less of them at night. Unless you know, your graveshift person like of course, all of this gets turned on its head, exercise patterns are eating and drinking patterns can cue certain things in the body rates or metabolism and the way that insulin works and leptin and ghrelin and all of those different hormones that happen with our hunger, but the most powerful one light and that's the one that just I was kind of blown away because of course, I didn't really understand how the different wavelengths that are present in different light tones, right so if you think about a sunrise and sunset, those are always going to have those warm light tones, as opposed to when the sun is totally at noon it's kind of more of a bright white or blue tone to the light those different tones or wavelengths of light actually hit photoreceptors not only in our eyeballs but also on our skin right and can have a huge effect on all sorts of different things. And so that's where this whole like ever thing got super really interesting for me is like
Evie Takacs 4:54
yeah, the same.I became so fascinated by that of there are these natural cues, these, I call it free medicine, right all around us that will just, yeah, we just I'm like I really the light is what's going to help dictate tell my body like how much cortisol to produce or how we know what digestion could look like or when they start going to sleep. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized, like we have over complicated things, because we've had these cues for so long right before electricity, this was definitely way more natural for people like the sun is up. So we should be doing things in the sun goes down, we should probably turn and go to bed. So it was just really interesting to me as well, like, this is so simple and overlooked. And that bit it plays such a big role in our health, and especially the circadian rhythm.
Toréa Rodriguez 5:42
It does. And, you know, most people think of circadian rhythm as the time that we go to sleep. And one of the things that I found really interesting when I was really digging deep into a lot of the different articles about it. And some of the studies that have been published is, you know, a lot of our hormones are on these internal circadian rhythm type clocks, but they need these external cues, these site givers I love that word. It's so fun to say these like givers to be able to trigger them, right. And so we think about sleep, that there is this, you can think of it as a clock or a timer that is instigated in the body with morning light, that approximately 12 hours later is when the body starts to produce melatonin. And so, you know, I think is kind of counterintuitive at first, when you tell somebody like you tell a client like first morning sunlight is great, it's going to help you sleep the next night. And they're like, what, yeah, what How was that possible, but as because that timer, that internal clock gets queued. And then all of a sudden, they're able to, you know, produce a little bit more melatonin. Now, this is assuming, of course, that they're not under a bunch of bright light at nighttime. Right? We can talk get into that and talk a little bit about that. But yeah, these light cues are huge for the body. And I know you have a you've also been experimenting with red light, do you want to talk about the red light piece specifically in the red wavelengths and what you've learned about.
Evie Takacs 7:15
Yeah, so I've been doing red light therapy, I first got into it, because I started seeing a lot of products about it. And I was like, Oh, this sounds interesting. And, you know, to be honest, I was like this might be good for skin, you know, just you know, vanity things to have this might help some scarring of skin, things that I have with acne and all that. And so I got into it with that. But then the more I learned about photobiomodulation, how it affects your mitochondria. And then I met someone locally to me, here in Cincinnati, who owns Midwest red light therapy. And he talks he taught me a lot about, you know, red light and how you can time it during the day. So ideally, you want to be exposed to red light during the day, because that's when we're also exposed to red light. But also red light comes from things like fire, right, so candles, if you light your house later on in the evening, when the sun goes down, you have a fireplace or you have candles lit that's going to be red light exposure to so it's a lot more gentle. It's not as bright or stimulating as blue light, which is what we get usually, you know, middle of the day that noon sun you're talking about. So ideally, you want to be exposed to red light when the sun is still out. But it can also be very efficient or very effective at regulating your circadian rhythm as well because it can take away that big high stimulation from the blue light that you get during the day and help kind of bring your cortisol levels down, increase melatonin when you do it in the evening, too. And, like we talked about with light exposure in the evening, really trying to decrease the amount of blue light, and really all spectrum of light in the evening. So you can use things like blue light blocking glasses, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But I've also with the red light. I've experimented with doing a red light light bulb in my lamp. Ooh, fun. So I've been doing that it's just two nights of it. So I don't have a lot to go off of. But I will say that it definitely changes the environment of the room. You know, even though it's just one lamp that was lit, I still feel like that was a little too much light exposure, too much blue light because it was an LED light. So having that red light, that red kind of just light take over the room is really relaxing the evening. I've heard a lot of people do this with kids as well and it can help them with their melatonin levels because they can sleep a lot better if they have more that red light in the evening. That softer light versus that harsh blue light that comes from the light bulbs and LED lights that we're used to.
Toréa Rodriguez 9:36
Yeah, exactly. It just happened to look at an Instagram feed and Dr. Rhonda Patrick, I love her as a researcher and scientist and she was talking about a research paper that just recently came out that studied blue light exposure and children and how it suppressed blue light or white light right or normal light bulbs that LED lights, that kind of thing. That stuff that's coming off of screens like all That is blue light exposure, that it suppresses melatonin production in children. 98%. Yeah. Thank you. Like, can you imagine how different bedtime would be if you know, there were warm lights in the evening, as opposed to screens and bright lights, and then you're trying to get these kids to go to bed, but they have zero melatonin, right? Because they're not producing it. And they don't want to go to bed, right. But it can be a lot easier and a smoother transition. And when you talk about your red light bulb, I always think about the times when I'm outside or camping, and we are around a campfire, right, there's this like, I don't know, it's almost like a meditative draw, to just look at the fire and watch the fire and just relax. Like, that's such a soothing piece. And a lot of it has to do with these cues that's happening in the body is that we're not looking at really bright light, we're just looking at these nice warm glows of fire or sunset, or whatever that happens to be. And our body is starting to do the things that it was designed to do, like help us have really restorative sleep, which, you know, in turn, will help us set up the day for really nice response with our cortisol.
Evie Takacs 11:19
Yeah, definitely, it's been, I'm excited to see what the next few weeks of doing that it's going to bring, because I already wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening. But I'm interested to see if I have things if I have that light bulb in there. And you know, I also got string lights too. So I actually interestingly brought up the research with the kids, I bought those for my nephews for Christmas, because one of them he already wears blue light blocking glasses, which I think is so cute. He, I think he heard me talking about it. And he was really interested. So he uses that if he's on his iPad in the evening, but I'm, I'm going to be curious if he if they do this red light, if that also helps, because he does have trouble sleeping. You know, he's the kid who wakes up at three in the morning and wants to go sleep with mommy and daddy. So I wonder if that's going to be you know, helpful. And so when I saw that it was reassuring. I'm like, Okay, this could probably be a good thing for him to have that red light in the evening. And just that dimmer softer light versus the harsh light that is on usually.
Toréa Rodriguez 12:16
Right. Right. Yeah, keep us posted how that goes? Because I'm super curious to see see what's happening with the the your own red lights. You know, we took we my husband and I we we decided to get those Hue lights that you can control the different color yes off of. And so we put those in our bedside lamps. And so we always have them set to some, like orangey red type color, when we're going to bed so that, you know, we're we're queueing that way. And both of us actually have noticed that it's a heck of a lot easier to fall asleep. When we switched the color of the lamps in our bedroom. Very cool. I'm getting up, right, I think a lot of my clients who are challenged with sleep and getting up early in the morning, or they they have a little bit of a what I call a shifted circadian rhythm, right where they're kind of doing the night owl thing and then sleeping in until nine or 10 in the morning. And one of the things we start working on is shifting that to be closer and closer to the cycle of the sun. But just getting out first thing in the morning like you and I can rattle off probably five to seven different benefits of why that's so important. You want to take a stab at not feeling
Evie Takacs 13:35
well. Because like you said the I think of it as like a countdown right it sets the countdown of when your body will start to produce more of the melatonin so you can start to unwind and get to bed earlier. So it helps your sleep. I think it sets the tone for it's time for the body to get up and get going cortisol production will increase which we know that hormone helps us. You know, it's the hormone that helps with the alertness. It's also anti inflammatory. So we want that to be at the appropriate levels at the appropriate times of the day. I mentioned in the other episodes, I personally like it because it helps me it's a good time for me to kind of wash off like the night and the sleep and just get moving and kind of get those cobwebs out so I can get alert, be alert during the day. What would you add to that?
Toréa Rodriguez 14:21
I mean, getting outside and going for a walk first thing in the morning. It may not be circadian rhythm related but you know me I like to double dip whenever possible. So whatever I'm doing, I want to have it have multiple benefits, right? So you get some movement in which is hugely important. Like start off the day with some just getting steps in it. We're not talking, putting running shoes on and going for a five mile run. Literally like you can just walk around the block. And if you don't have that kind of energy, sit on your porch, drink a cup of tea or whatever it is in the morning and just get that morning sun. I try to even though it's winter So sometimes in the winter, it's just my face, right, but I try and expose as much skin. So sometimes I'll like roll up my sleeves or whatever exposes much skin to the sun, right, because when we are not in that prime time, we're still getting some of those benefits of generating some vitamin D through that natural process that happens in our skin cells. And then fresh air and breathing, right. So just getting in some nice breathwork, or rhythmic breath in the morning is super helpful. And for the most part, I'm close to nature. So I'll go to the nearest park and do our walk in a park or try and do it in a place that's surrounded by trees or something like that. So getting out in nature, it's also very helpful for the nervous system. So even though those aren't necessarily like circadian rhythm kind of things, they're still external cues, that helps our body work the best that I can from the environment. Right. So those are a lot of different reasons that I like doing that morning. One,
Evie Takacs 16:03
I agree, I agree. Um,
Toréa Rodriguez 16:06
one thing that I learned just the other day, and this is my own, like experimentation into intermittent fasting and really paying attention to blood sugar levels, and that kind of thing is that the circadian rhythm is also involved in our blood glucose modulation, right. And so we are more insulin resistant, meaning it takes a lot longer to burn off the calories that we eat after the sun goes down. And I just found that to be totally fascinating of, once again, here we are with circadian rhythms, like everything is happening with in sync in synchronization with the sun, right. And so we actually can metabolize food better when the sun when it's still light out. So those meals that are happening and being consumed after dark are going to take a lot longer to metabolize. And I found that really fascinating to
Evie Takacs 17:04
that is really, really fascinating. I think if if a lot of people stopped and thought about it, they'd be like, Oh, I can see that, or I get that or, you know, I can see how that would apply to me. Now, again, it might not always be the case, like some people can tolerate having meals later after dark. But it's it's interesting in like the late night snackers, right, because I'm like, Well, I wonder how much how much more of an effect that's having on you. Because you are snacking in the evening versus if you were to have those snacks in the morning. Right? If that behavior was shifted earlier, I wonder if it affects you the same as if it does in the evening? So just something to be curious about?
Toréa Rodriguez 17:40
Yeah, something to play around with? Um, how about mood? Have you ever been affected by mood and sunlight?
Evie Takacs 17:45
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, so definitely, I live in the Midwest. So Winters can definitely be rough, because we don't get as much sunlight as we normally do in the summer, the days are definitely shorter. I mean, you know that when the days when the sun goes down in his pitch black by 5pm, it's really, really hard to not be affected by that. For me, personally, I'm a Sunshine Girl. I love the sun. I love the summer. So that's also I mean, that would actually be another reason why I'm such a big proponent of going on morning walks and getting that natural light in the morning. Because I do feel like that exposure is really helpful for me because I do benefit from that sunlight. And that makes just, it just, it makes me feel happy and joyful and more optimistic. And so when I get that first thing in the morning, that's going to set the tone for the rest of my day. Whereas if I don't get that, I have a little bit of a harder time, like getting up and get going and feeling really good and feeling really focused and energized. So I do like that. And I've noticed a correlation in the days where there's been days where it doesn't look like the time has changed at all like it's it's cloudy in the morning. And it just stays the same type of cloudiness all day. And you're like, is it still 8am? Like what you have no sense of time at that point, because the sun doesn't move the way I've done. Yeah. And that will also affect my mood as well. So I'm definitely and by it.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:07
Oh, I'm so influenced by it. So I grew up in Colorado. And you know, Colorado is known for having, you know, 340 some odd sunny days a year right? And went to university in Bellingham, Washington, which is pretty much overcast for nine months out of the year. And, I mean, we didn't even really fully understand seasonal affective disorder or sad in the way that we do now and how we are so affected from a cognitive mood standpoint. And man that first year of university was hard, like I was not motivated to do things I wasn't motivated to get outside. I just wanted to stay in, you know, and definitely dealing with, like depression For the first time in my life, and I couldn't figure out like, Is this because I'm away from home, like what is going on here, you know. And then that summer, and that first summer after that first year, I came to California to help out with a family project. And lo and behold, Sunshine man, I was just like overjoyed and energized and just having the best time and I couldn't even I couldn't get myself to go back. So I did the long haul and, you know, changed universities and did the out of state tuition thing, community college and all that stuff. But now like, we've got such wonderful resources to understand what's happening when we go to shorter daytime periods right in the winter here in the northern hemisphere, and in the summer in the southern hemisphere. And we can get full spectrum lamps to help us with that. In fact, I've, I've got one in my window that I use in the mornings, right, because I rise before the sun comes up, typically. And so I will turn that on and get full spectrum light with a full spectrum lamp and use that a lot during the winter months. And it makes a huge amount of difference.
Evie Takacs 21:17
Oh, I can imagine. Yeah, when you wake up and it's dark, and it's cold. And you know, the sun won't be up for like another hour and a half. It's it's really hard to get going and start your day
Toréa Rodriguez 21:27
It is and the power of light is so amazing that instantly, I feel a difference when I turn that lamp on. And it's I didn't think that it would be so instant. But I can literally feel kind of like this relief. It's almost like when you're waking up and it's still dark, like you said, and you know, it's a good hour and a half or so before the sun is actually going to come up it kind of feels like this. Wait. It's the same feeling. I used to get having to get up at two in the morning to go show up for a flight an early morning flight. Like it's just like, oh, yeah, you're just so it takes so much to get moving. You turn that light on, and it feels much better. And you know, we even have devices that you can use to give yourself light exposure to help yourself adjusted jetlag, right. So if you're crossing the Atlantic and you're trying to adjust to jetlag, you can do these little like light doses with intense blue light to help with that circadian rhythm shift. Because that's really what you're doing when you're changing time zones. You're shifting your entire circadian rhythm and takes place
Evie Takacs 22:33
to figure that out. Definitely. Yeah, it's really cool that we can so it's, again, free medicine free resource to adjust in. Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 22:43
Yeah, and so I guess really, for people who are listening, it doesn't mean that you have to do things, the way that we're doing not everybody's gonna have the luxury of being able to get up and immediately go for a walk, you know, they might be getting kids ready for school and packing lunches and that kind of thing. So it's really about taking what you hear and picking those things that you think you could implement pretty easily, or making a small shift, because, you know, most of these things that we do in health and wellness, like we're not changing everything all at once and you hear one topic about circadian rhythm and all of a sudden, it's like, okay, dinner's got to be done by five, and then we got to all get up with the sunrise, you know, and that's such a hard change to do in a household. So really, it's picking picking one of those things, even if it's buying a red light. That's like a super simple way of doing it or blue light blocking glasses, right, so that we can protect ourselves from too much blue light exposure during the evening hours or even during the day, like a lot of us are on computers all day long, right. And we're getting blue and green light exposure from the computers and you can get mild blue light blocking. So these are prescription glasses that I have on right now. And they have mild blue light blocking in them specifically more for like glare control or I can't remember the name of what they called it, but it definitely blocks a little bit of that blue light and I can tell the eyestrain is less the fatigue is less when I'm using those kinds of things. But then when I'm done for the day, I shift into the glasses that are darker, the orange ones right that are blocking the blue light and that helps a
Evie Takacs 24:26
lot. Definitely. So
Toréa Rodriguez 24:29
yeah, have you gotten everybody in your household to do blue light.
Evie Takacs 24:32
So Danny, my husband, he has not done blue light blockers but he understands that we turn the overhead lights off you know, it basically the cue is when the sun goes down, the lights go down to So overhead lights go off turn lamps on when we had the you know the Christmas tree that's really nice because that would be a really that would be a better light source than having overhead lights. I wear my bullet blocking glasses, but he is on board with the red light bulb so that'll be interesting. To see if he notices a change too, because he's like, Oh, I don't, I don't need blue blocking glasses in the evening. But I'd be curious to see what he thinks he does wear them during the day at work, because he works on a screen all day. So and he has noticed that he feels better just in terms of even like eyestrain headaches. So yeah, he's on board. But we'll see. We'll see what changes he notices versus one that I noticed too.
Toréa Rodriguez 25:24
Yeah, it's interesting, because I think for me, in my household, I was the one who struggled with insomnia for a long time, right. And I started using blue light blocking glasses. And almost within two or three days, I was able to start falling asleep within a few minutes instead of 3045 an hour. You know, that's how it how much it affected me. And Jeremy, my husband, he started wearing blue light blocking glasses, but he didn't really notice a difference, because he was already you know, hitting the pillow and falling asleep. So it for him, it wasn't an immediate feedback or enough of a feedback to make long term behavior change. But he is really open to having the lower lights and the different kinds of colors in our lamps at night. And that really helps him relax. So he notices the relaxing piece more than the insomnia piece like,
Evie Takacs 26:17
Yeah, I know, it's, it's interesting to see how everyone is affected differently. I think there's benefits for all it's just, again, if you're starting out with that's not even a problem for you in terms of falling asleep, then yeah, you might not notice a big difference with the glasses, but you might notice it in a different way.
Toréa Rodriguez 26:33
Yeah, yeah, totally. So we'll include some of the links in the show notes to the lamps and the lightbulbs, and maybe some blue light blocking glasses and that kind of thing. Any final takeaways that you want to say,
Evie Takacs 26:46
I think just again, like Toréa said, take a little piece of what you heard today, you don't have to uproot your entire routine, you don't have to go for a 35 minute, walk in the morning, do what you can and just get curious on how this is going to impact you and know that these things are available to you for whenever you're ready to implement them. And it's just it's a fun experiment to see what you notice when you start implementing these things.
Toréa Rodriguez 26:46
It is. And if I could, I would put a link to the sun in the shownotes. But I can't. But it is absolutely free. Like you said, I mean, that's one of the coolest things about it is that it's free, it's available to us. There is no economic limitation to allowing you to get out and just take advantage of the sun. And like I said, it doesn't have to be a walk. It can be literally sitting on the porch with your tea in the morning or whatever you're drinking in the morning and just absorbing that light as much as you can without sunglasses. I should have said that. Yeah, we want naked eyeballs during this, right? Because we actually do want the light to go into the eyes. And because the sun is so low on the horizon, we're not going to have the same effect with the cells at the back of the eyes as we would during the day. So you don't necessarily or higher points of the day. You don't necessarily need to have Sonny's on in the morning, so it's actually better field. So yeah, super cool. Well, thank you so much, Evie for joining me and we'll see all of you guys at the next day. So have a great one.
Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of the wildly optimize wellness podcast. If you're ready to dig deeper into your health, stop playing the whack as symptom game, start testing to get better guidance. You can find more about Toréa at torearodriguez.com And you can find Evie at holisticallyrestored.com. One a peek into what it's like to work with us. Come join us at our optimize wellness community. You can find the invitation link in the show notes below. And if you have a question for the show, you can submit your question under the podcast section of torearodriguez.com. Finally, if you found something helpful in this episode, don't forget to leave a review, hit that follow button or share it with a friend. They're gonna love that you thought of them. Until next time, see you outside!
