The Habit You Never Knew Was Causing Insomnia & Anxiety

We are designed and adapted to work, eat, and move during the day, and to sleep, rejuvenate, and repair at night. We function in perfect harmony with the movements of the planet; even our hormone production is coordinated with the rising and setting of the sun, in a complex system that has evolved over millions of years. All of this occurs, quite simply, to increase the chances of our survival. It’s only relatively recently, however, that we’ve really started to understand the relationship between the circadian rhythm and our well-being, and that’s why the news that the Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded to three scientists who discovered the gene responsible for ensuring for controlling circadian rhythm is hugely significant.

The hormone melatonin, the production of which both reflects the sleep and wake cycle as well as helping to control it, in a healthy woman, is timed according to the rotation of the earth. But if you go to bed too late then it won’t be released at the right time or in the right amount. The consequences of this are significant: Melatonin plays many roles in the body. It is both a potent antioxidant, and new research has suggested that it also works within the GI tract to properly set the clock of the microbiome in the gut. If the clocks of the microbes living within the gut have faulty timing, this can lead to a whole host of metabolic, emotional, and immune problems.

If you don't keep a consistent sleep schedule—even with short interruptions, such as going to bed later and eating at different times on the weekend––you risk developing a sleep-phase disorder. This amounts to your body thinking it is in a different time zone than the one you’re living in. Let’s say your body thinks you’re in New York when you’re in California: You wake up as if you were living in New York, at three in the morning instead of six and then that night, you start to feel drowsy three hours earlier than you should. Soon, your body is completely out of whack. Your hormone and neurotransmitter production changes, and directly––through the activation of the adrenal axis––and indirectly––through inflammation in the gut––your mental health starts to fail, and anxiety and depression can set in.

When you ignore the rhythms of nature, you risk insomnia, anxiety, depression, and a multitude of medical problems. So why not start living in alignment with your planet today?