Doctor reckons doing one thing every morning will improve your sleep
When it comes to sleep the dream is to wake up feeling properly rested - and ready for the day ahead. But that is not always realistic as we tackle daily demands.
Now one expert has revealed one thing that you can do in the morning in order to get a better night's sleep and even lift your mood. Russell Foster, professor of Circadian Neuroscience from Oxford University, says people have an "internal clock" that helps us with the "demands" of a 24-hour day.
He says this clock needs to be "tuned" to work alongside our day-to-day lives. Foster however says most people's body clock is tuned to run slightly later than it should, due to later work and social commitment. He believes this has led to people needing to get more light in the mornings.
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He highlighted Scandinavian nations where families often have light boxes to help them adjust in the morning. Speaking on the Feel Better, Live More podcast with Dr Rangan Chatteree, he explained: "Morning light makes us get up earlier, it advances that clock."
"Evening light delays the clock and makes us get up later. Most of us, 90 percent of us, have a body clock that is slightly longer than 24 hours, we under constant conditions would drift later and later."
Foster says people need to be getting morning light as close to when they wake up as possible. Although, he concedes many people will be unable to get outside into the morning light as the mornings are darker.
He says an alternative is to invest in a SAD lamp - used by people with seasonal affective disorder, also known as winter depression. Foster explained: "I think we could learn something from our Scandinavian cousins here."
"In Tromso, which is the most extraordinary place in Northern Norway, it is dark for two months of the year. What the families do there is have a light box, it is set to more than 2,000 lux for 30 minutes and they have their breakfast in a room where there is artificial light and they use that to set the clock to the external world."
Foster says this "stabilises" their body clock and helps maintain their sleep pattern. He also says light is "very powerful" for people with both seasonal and non-seasonal depression.
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