Sleep Hygiene Tip of the Week: How to avoid social jet lag

You get up every weekday early, stay up late, and rack up some sleep debt between Monday and Friday.

Saturday and Sunday morning you sleep in, and you maybe even take a nap during the day.

Then Monday morning rolls around and you feel sleep deprived already, thanks to that early morning alarm.

Here you go again, another week of sleeping less than 7 hours a night, followed by a temporary catch up, then BOOM, the Monday morning blahs.

Does this sound familiar? If it does, then you belong to a large section (estimates run between 30 and 60 percent) of our population experiencing what is known as social jet lag. 

We all know jet lag as a disruption of our sleep (circadian) rhythms that's caused by traveling across several time zones, leaving us out of sync. Social jet lag also desynchronizes our rhythms, but without the vacation or business trip built in.

Social jet lag, also known as Monday morning blues, is what happens when we short ourselves of sleep over a period of time, then sleep extensively for a couple of days to "make up" for lost sleep, only to put ourselves at risk for renewed sleep deprivation when we start the cycle all over again.

Like yo-yo dieting, sleep habits that promote social jet lag, when practiced on a regular basis, aren't harmless. Misaligned circadian rhythms increase your risk for diabetes, obesity, and depression. They can also put you at higher risk for drowsy driving, poor performance while on the job, and relationship struggles due to irritability, absentmindedness, and mood swings.

If you have always been a morning lark or a night owl, you have a well established chronotype. This means your circadian rhythms represent the characteristics of one of these two common sleeping patterns.

If you know your chronotype, find ways to honor it if you are able. For instance, if you have any flexibility in your work schedule, take advantage of it. More companies than ever have instituted flex time plans or can grant you adjusted working hours if it means you will get better sleep; a well-slept employee is a successful one. It may mean you go to work earlier and leave earlier, or start your day later and work later.

How to avoid social jet lag by focusing on sleep hygiene

• Go to bed at a decent hour, allowing yourself at least 8 hours to capture a full night's sleep (so, if you must get up at 530am, then go to bed at 9 or 930pm for best results)
• Get up at around the same hour everyday, even on weekends (your circadian rhythms will appreciate it!)
• Spend more time out of doors, especially in the morning. A blast of natural light every morning makes for an easy circadian reset
• If you work indoors every day, find a good source of natural light or use a full-spectrum lamp in the morning at your desk to help support daytime wakefulness, which will help improve evening sleepiness after the sun goes down
• Keep your bedroom dark, cool, and quiet to maximize your sleep environment
• Put your phone or other handheld gadget away an hour before bedtime to prevent exposure to blue spectrum light, which can interfere with circadian system processes which help improve melatonin release in the evening

Learn more about social jet lag

Check out a great infographic on social jet lag here at BizBrain.

Here's a basic abstract on the roots and definition of social jet lag from Chronobiology International.

Huffington Post has numerous articles on social jet lag archived here.

A scientist from Germany has put together this interesting short video on body clocks that help explain social jet lag.

The diagram below illustrates the timeline for a normal circadian rhythm. Note that melatonin (the sleep hormone) is secreted at around 9pm and stops around 730am. Remember, blue light exposure during this time will wreak havoc on your ability to fall asleep, as this kind of light essentially shuts down melatonin production and release. This is the reason why the backlit screen on your electronic tablet, handheld game or cell phone should be turned off at night. If you struggle with falling asleep or staying asleep, this bedtime habit just may be the culprit.

NORMAL CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

Today's #Sleeptember FACT --- Teens sleep (or don't sleep) like that for a reason

By now you've probably heard that late bedtime and sleep-in periods for teenagers are part of the normal final development of their brain.

This delayed sleep phase in adolescents is usually just that--a phase--though adults may never "grow out of it" and end up being night owls. This can be a good or bad thing depending upon the goals of a person with late-night "eveningness," but that is the subject of another piece.

#SLEEPTEMBER

Teenagers are experiencing delayed sleep phase for a variety of reasons but what we all need to remember is that they still very much need their sleep, but aren't getting it. National Sleep Foundation Sleep in America polls annually bear out the truth: our teens are sleep deprived, due to burdensome schedules filled with homework, activities, sports and jobs.

On top of that, they are consuming large quantities of caffeine to medicate away their daytime sleepiness, getting into more automobile accidents than ever before, and suffering sleep-related health issues like anxiety, attention deficit, depression, even obesity, as a result.

To learn more about American teen sleep habits, check out the 2006 Sleep in America poll teen results here.

Sleep Hygiene Tip of the Week || Rise time versus Bed time... which is better?

We're a culture in perpetual motion, so it's hard to always have the same sleep schedule, day in and day out. Either it's travel that messes up our schedule, or the variations in morning and evening schedules that come from parenthood, or we might work jobs that don't support a regular sleep schedule.

So if forced to choose, which is better? Going to bed at the same time at night or getting up at the same time every morning?

Circadian resetting occurs at the time you awaken. What this means is that the morning light sends a signal through both your eyes and--believe it or not--your skin, which stimulates your wakefulness drive. If you get up at the same time of day, even as seasons shift, your body resets to the circadian rhythms of the planet, which more or less guide the processes of all living things. It's easier to stay on track if you get up at the same time every day. It's even better to GO OUTSIDE for even 10 minutes, as that short dose of sunlight (even if it's dim or overcast) is still brighter than the lights in your house, and this will help you fight sleepiness during the day.

At night, it's a good idea to try to stick to a bedtime schedule (especially for children or for people with challenging schedules where they have to work hard to make sure they get enough sleep between shifts). But sometimes you just aren't as sleepy at that time. No worries. Remember that wakefulness drive I mentioned earlier? It works in tandem with your sleep drive. We all have a built in drive to sleep (just like we have a hunger drive, or a sex drive, or a thirst drive). That drive is informed by how much we slept previously (that includes naps during the day). So if you normally go to bed at 9pm and get up at 5am, and you take a 2-hour nap at 1pm, you might not feel as sleepy later, at 9pm, because you actually banked a couple of hours of sleep, thus delaying your sleep drive. So what do you do? You just go to bed when you begin to feel drowsy and don't worry so much about what time the clock says. Your body has its own built-in clocks, it will let you know when it's time to hit the hay.

One thing to keep in mind... some people tend to have more "morningness" (aka "larks") while some people tend to have more "eveningness" (aka "owls). Neither is better than the other, they are simply tendencies ingrained into our biological clocks at a fairly early age. The time when you go to bed or rise should suit your lifestyle and your natural tendencies rather than follow a prescription set by somebody else (except in the case of children, who are still developing their sleep habits).