Outdoor camping resets internal body clock, sleeping habits
Camping and spending time in the great outdoors resets the body’s internal clock that influences sleeping habits, a team of scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US has found.
The team said that spending time outdoors and exposing ourselves to more bright light in the day (and less at night) could help those struggling to get up in the morning and boost health.
The body has a daily “circadian” rhythm that anticipates day and night to co-ordinate how our body works. It alters alertness, mood, physical strength, when we need to sleep and even the risk of a heart attack as part of a 24-hour cycle.Light helps the clock keep time, but modern life with artificial light, alarm clocks and smartphones has altered our sleeping habits.
Dr. Kenneth Wright, from the University of Colorado Boulder, said that we are waking up at a time when our circadian clock says we should still be asleep and this is damaging to health, with studies suggesting links with mood disorders, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. It also simply makes us really groggy and sleepy when we try to get up in the morning.
So Dr. Wright organized a series of camping expeditions for a small group of volunteers. They had to wear special watches that recorded light levels and had blood tests to analyze the sleep hormone melatonin. The only artificial light they were allowed was the glow of a campfire, even a torch was banned.
The first thing they learned on a week-long camping trip in winter was people were exposed to 13 times more light than at home, even though it was the darkest part of the year.Their melatonin levels also started to rise two-and-a-half hours earlier than before the expedition and they went to bed earlier too.The campers were now sleeping and waking in tune with their body clocks.
Another camping trip showed most of that benefit could be gained by just going away for a weekend.
Dr. Wright noted that camping is not a long-term solution but it can help introduce more natural light to modern life. “It is something we as a society can regulate without people having to change behaviors,” he added.
He thinks homes, offices and schools could be designed to allow in more natural light.And the new generation of “tuneable” light bulbs – that can be made far brighter in the day and dimmer at night – could also be used.
However, at the moment, people’s body clocks would start to shift back to their old rhythm once the tent was packed up.In order to continue to benefit from the camping reset, people would need to get a large hit of light in the day – for example by going out for a walk before work – and cut down in the evening by using less artificial light.
The researchers also picked up clues that our body clocks alter during the year and that may affect how our body functions.
In a week of summer camping, melatonin production was altered by two hours, in winter it was altered by 2.6 hours.It is a suggestion there is something different about the way our bodies react to the longer or shorter day.
It is also known that some people suffer from low mood with seasonal affective disorders.”We have a hint there’s something there and maybe at one point it time it was critical and now, in a modern environment, maybe we don’t need to worry about putting on more weight in winter, but the impacts may still be hardwired in our physiology,” Dr. Wright said.
