How I Beat Insomnia with a 21-Day Circadian Reset: Are You One of 2.3 Billion Tired People?
"My sleep has been awful."
My sleep has been awful." In 2024, I’ve heard this sentiment echoed countless times. Like many, I’ve been grappling with poor sleep quality and exploring solutions to improve my circadian rhythm.
I did a 21 day deep dive into what I believe is one of the biggest drivers of this sleep epidemic, and I will share everything that I learned.
But if you're in the same boat, take solace in the fact that it is a very, very big boat. Over the last 20 years, office visits to treat insomnia have gone up 1,000%.
Sleep is my Bitcoin. When those first nerds started transacting with Bitcoin at fractions of a penny, most of them couldn't fathom that a handful of those "pennies" would exceed the value of a home. I used to treat my sleep like pennies. Expendable, in surplus, and almost a nuisance. And completely unaware of the immense value those squandered hours meant for so much of my health.
I even tried to ignore it, or hack it with tactics like polyphasic sleeping. "I'll sleep when I'm dead." It turns out, that mantra is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don't sleep, you'll be inviting death a lot sooner.
Adults who sleep less than 7 hours per night are 22.9% more likely to experience depression compared to 14.6% of those getting adequate sleep.
People who sleep less than 6 hours per night are 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes compared to those who get sufficient sleep.
There is a 45% increase in the risk of heart attack for adults sleeping 5 hours or less per night.
Adults aged 27 and above who sleep less than 6 hours a day are 7.5 times more likely to have a higher body mass index, increasing their risk of obesity.
Driving after 20 hours without sleep is equivalent to driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, which is the legal limit in most U.S. states.
I don't think the bulk of the sleep epidemic is caused by misinformation, hustle culture, or stress (although those don't help).
The rise in insomnia is in lockstep with the mass adoption of smartphones. Hear me out on this. Let's start at the world's first clock.
Your Circadian Rhythm
Like most of my obsessions, this one for sounder sleep led me to my primal roots and contentious relationship with technology. In the days long before electric lamps, life revolved around the sun's rising and setting. Therein lies the foundation of circadian cycles, the 24-hour rhythms that can be observed in all people, plants, and animals.
This can be traced back to some of the earliest cells with photosensitive proteins. Protecting the DNA from the ultraviolet radiation during the day, the cell’s replication would only occur at night.
Humans have been trying to extend daylight since about 70,000 BC. A hollow shell or rock filled with moss or sponge soaked with animal fat would burn for a little while past sunset. This tech evolved into lamps with a more robust body, wicks, and longer-lasting fuel sources.
By the end of the 18th century, lamps were ubiquitous among most human cultures. Even so, they were a far cry from today’s high-pressure sodium discharge lamps. So when the sun went down, the day was over. Work was done, battles were put on hold, and people slept.
We All Move With the Sun
Let’s stop and think about the hundreds of thousands of years humans have spent with life exclusively revolving around the sun. If we throw in the evolution of photosensitive proteins, we can even call it hundreds of millions of years.
As a species, our time spent around light after sunset has been negligible on an evolutionary scale. The countless systems in our body that depend on these rhythms include regulating body temperature, cortisol, blood pressure, melatonin, growth hormone, testosterone, and metabolism.
Fast forward to the Industrial Age and work days that transcend far past nightfall or even began at dark. Enter the recent Digital Age and the widespread late-night TikTok scrolling. If you think this behavior might squarely oppose the essence of how we’re wired, you’re absolutely correct.
The Original Clock
Our “master clock” is in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) in the brain's hypothalamus. The SCN regulates hormone production, metabolism, and sleep by taking external cues such as light and darkness.
Researchers have recently found evidence of a system in the eye entirely independent of the light-detecting proteins found in the rods and cones. A protein named melanopsin, particularly sensitive to blue light, is now believed responsible for carrying the signals to the brain’s master clock.
These blue lights, prevalent in that little screen in your face, tells your brain to wake up and sets off a cascade of other biological actions.
The 21 Day Circadian Challenge
For 21 days, I decided not to use any electrical lights, computer screens, TV, or phone after sunset. My family was also subject to this experiment, although my daughter would go into her room and close the door, not into the idea of doing her homework by candlelight.
The light emitted from fire does not include blue light in its spectrum as the white incandescent, fluorescent, and halogen sources. If I had to leave the house after sundown, I wore glasses with orange lenses to keep as much blue light as possible from hitting my eye’s melanopsin proteins.
Here's What Happened
After a few evenings spent in candlelight, something very noticeable happened. Several hours before we’d usually turn in for the night, my wife and I felt hit by tranquilizer darts. It was beyond feeling relaxed. It was more like an innate pull to sleep, so we did that.
Historically, rising with the sun meant I wasn’t getting as much sleep as usual. When you go to sleep that early, waking up at sunrise isn’t a huge deal. Early mornings are beautiful. The stillness and absence of the usual morning rush are lovely. I also shifted some morning routines so I could get to work earlier, get way more done before the phone and Slack started, and then get home early.
Cooking in the dark is challenging. Half of our experiment went down before the daylight savings switch, so it was dark by 5pm. If you throw enough fire in a given area, it can get pretty well-lit, but it still isn’t the same as a bright overhead electric light. After the time switch, getting ready for nightfall, especially cooking, was much more relaxed.
There was a charming ritualistic piece to the whole thing. I had to leave work early and remove all the lamps and candles before sunset. The family would sit down for dinner with the candles, and there was a sense of serenity, unlike the usual glare of electric light.
Before electricity, people who read at night were called wax drippers. Now I know why. After a few nights of eye strain, I decided that the backlit e-ink Kindle display used with amber-lensed glasses was just generally better for my eyes and felt much more relaxing. I was already so tired from the candlelight that I was scared I’d doze off while reading and wake up in flames.
“Clean” is a loosely held term for many candle and lantern fuel manufacturers. When I had a ton of fire light going, sometimes the house would smell a bit chemical-y. The best strategy is to assume you won’t be doing many things after sundown that require very much light. Do most of the dinner prep before sundown and save the bulk of cleaning for the morning. Trying to recreate electric light ends up requiring a ton of candles and lanterns. It’s better to have a small one in each room and a little cluster of them where you have a specific activity, such as in the kitchen for meal prep and then moving them over to the dining table while eating.
Using a sleep-tracking wearable (WHOOP), I noted that my average deep sleep increased by 32% during this experiment. This made me think about what all that late-night doom scrolling was doing to my brain.
The experiment's biggest surprise was that after returning to our usual nighttime routine, I still woke up very early. In fact, I'm still waking up early, with no alarm. Those 21 days had a lasting effect on my internal clock.
I've since added many color changing smart bulbs throughout the house, and automation that changes them all to fire-tones at sunset. To reset the clock, I use a wearable pair of light glasses in lieu of the sun on those dark winter mornings. I also have a strict no-screen policy after 6pm.
Thanks for getting to the bottom of this trope. I hope it was educational at the least!
