I recently got some blackout curtains for my bedroom. This was pretty long overdue: about thirty feet from my bedroom window is a cheerfully bright, energy-efficient street lamp, which—while great when I’m taking the dog out for a nighttime stroll—is the photic equivalent of somebody standing in my azaleas and playing “Seventy-Six Trombones” while I’m […]
What is sleep regularity and why is it important? Sleep regularity is a gauge of how consistent a person’s sleep patterns are, based on the day-to-day variability in their sleep–wake times. In general, having poorer sleep regularity, or irregular sleep patterns, has been shown to lead to many adverse outcomes in metabolism, mental health, and […]
I woke up feeling groggy and lazy almost everyday in the past school semester leading up to this summer. I was already doing research on sleep at that point and I had a general idea about what I was doing wrong, but when I tried to dive deeper into the hundreds of articles on sleep […]
Signs of Circadian Disruption In this blog post, I want to point to some common symptoms of circadian disruption. The role of circadian rhythms in sleep is subtle, and many times issues that are attributed to other sources really have circadian factors as the root cause. The two process model: To understand the interaction between […]
Lately, I’ve been watching clips from the Olympics, getting misty-eyed when the athletes hug at the end, and then stalking the winners on social media: a normal Saturday night in 2021. I have a shirt that looks like that, I think as I scroll through photos of them lifting approximately three times my body weight. […]
I recently went on a trip to California. Coming from the East Coast, this was a three-hour shift west. To adjust to California time, I needed to delay my circadian clock. One catch, though: my flight out was extremely early in the morning. That meant, like it or not, I was going to advance myself […]
What Exactly is Shift Work Disorder? Shift work disorder, or SWD, is a type of circadian rhythm sleep disorder which is caused by working shifts that do not fall within the conventional working hours of around 9 am – 5 pm. These shifts overlap with periods of significant light sensitivity which can cause shift workers […]
It’s no secret that working shift work does a number on your body. From increased risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, to excessive alcohol consumption and worsened nutritional intake, shift work is associated with a whole host of nightmarish health effects. The simple solution would seem to be to get rid of jobs that […]
A sleep story Today we had the pleasure of interviewing one of our own, Eric. He’s a skilled mathematician and AWS developer here at Arcascope. Everyone has their own unique experience when it comes to catching Zzz’s, or in Eric’s case, NOT doing that. We wanted to chat with him and learn more about these […]
