NOT EVERYONE CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS AT THE PRESENT TIME, BUT FOR THOSE WHO CAN, WHY NOT GIVE IT A TRY? AND THIS WILL BE SOMETHING SOME OF US CAN LOOK FORWARD TO, HEY? CAMPING IS A FAVORITE TO MANY AND A NICE DISCOVERY IF YOU HAVE NEVER TRIED IT.
Camping Has the Power to Reset Our Internal Clocks
For diehard campers, no one needs to tell them how beneficial sleeping underneath the stars can be. The combination of peaceful tranquility, fresh air and connection with nature is enough to cure the effects of the 9-5. New research is backing up this intuition, suggesting that taking a time out from our busy, technology-soaked lives can help reset our internal clocks so we can literally rest more easily.
Researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder set out on a six day camping trip in the Rocky Mountains, sans smartphones and any other illuminating tools. For the duration of the trip, the campers only utilized daylight and the glow of their campfire. The result was the group going to sleep an average of two and a half hours earlier than they would at home and getting ten hours of sleep each night.
During the day, the campers were more active than they would be in their typical daily life, according to monitoring devices. They were also exposed to light levels up to thirteen times what they were used to. The effects lasted beyond their short trip, as well. Shortly after the trip, lab-tested melatonin levels in the participants were found to rise a few hours before their pre-camping bedtime, which starts the process of settling the body into sleep.
“Our modern environment has really changed the timing of our internal clocks, but also the timing of when we sleep relative to our clock,” Kenneth Wright, director of the university’s sleep and chronobiology lab, told The Guardian. “How our circadian clock responds to the natural light-dark cycle is part of our fundamental physiology.”
A second study, which included a control group who kept their usual routines at home, produced similar results. The folks who went camping—this time just for the weekend—also went to bed sooner and were exposed to four times more natural light.
Those behind the experiment have some good news for those who abhor sleeping outside with bugs and wildlife: you don’t have to go camping to reap the same benefits. All that is needed is close consideration of the light cycles to which you are exposed every day. Wright suggests exposing yourself to healthy levels of natural sunlight and choosing a reasonable time to hit the hay.
He adds, “I don’t think the take home from this study should be ‘let’s go camping’. We should look carefully at the environment in our homes and our bedrooms, at the light and temperature in the evening, and see how that affects our decision to go to sleep.”
From Care2.Com Green Living
Photo by Robert Lang
How Camping Helps You Sleep Better
By Alexandra Sifferlin - Time.Com 2017
Spending time in nature can work wonders for human health, from lowering blood pressure and stress hormones to sparking feelings of awe. Growing research suggests it may also improve sleep by resetting our internal clocks to a natural sleep cycle. A new study released in the journal Current Biology adds to that evidence by showing the sleep-promoting benefits of the great outdoors.
Kenneth Wright, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of the new study, embarked on his camping research back in 2013, when he sent people on a week-long summer camping trip to understand how their internal clocks changed without electronics and only natural light. Before and after the trip, he measured their levels of the hormone melatonin, which alerts the body when it’s time to prepare for bed and helps set a person’s internal clock. Wright found that people’s internal clocks were delayed by two hours in their modern environment—which isn’t a good thing, since an out-of-whack sleep cycle has been linked to health problems like sleepiness, mood problems and a higher risk of being overweight. But they were able to recalibrate after a week in nature.
Now, in the new study, Wright set out to better understand how long it takes for people to recalibrate their internal sleep cycles and whether it also works in winter.
In the first part of his study, Wright equipped five people with wearable devices that measured when they woke up, when they went to bed and how much light they were normally exposed to. Wright also measured their melatonin levels in a lab. After that, everyone went on a week-long camping trip—but this time, it was during the winter.
Wright found that people’s internal clocks were delayed during their normal schedules—this time by two hours and 36 minutes—compared to when they were exposed to only natural light on their camping trip. They also had higher melatonin levels, which signals that it’s a person’s biological night. “We don’t know what this means, but we do know some humans are sensitive to seasonal changes,” says Wright. “Some people get winter depression or may gain weight a bit more.”
In the second part of the study, Wright wanted to see what happened when some people went camping for just a weekend and others stayed home. Most who stayed home stayed up later than usual and slept in, and their internal clocks were pushed back even further. But on the two-day trip, campers’ internal clocks shifted earlier. “That says we can rapidly change the timing of our internal clock,” says Wright.
Fun as it may be, camping isn’t the only way to get similar results, Wright says: Exposing yourself to morning light, cutting down on electrical light from smartphones and screens in the evening and even dimming the lights at home can help.
As for Wright, he sets his internal clock by hiking in the morning, then waking up and going to sleep at the same time every day. It appears to be working: he doesn’t even need an alarm clock anymore.
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