Tips for Resetting Your Internal Clock and Sleeping Better

By Dr. Mercola

Good sleep is one of the cornerstones of health, without which optimal health will remain elusive. Impaired sleep can increase your risk of a wide variety of diseases and disorders, including:

• Heart disease
• Stomach ulcers
• Mood disorders like depression
• Cancer

Numerous factors can contribute to poor sleep, including vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The featured article by LiveScience¹ highlights three nutrients tied to three common sleep problems. To this, I would add melatonin, which is both a hormone and an antioxidant:

• Magnesium deficiency can cause insomnia
• Lack of potassium can lead to difficulty staying asleep throughout the night
• Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to excessive daytime sleepiness

 

The Importance of Melatonin

I personally believe that melatonin is one of the most important nutrients to help you optimize your sleep, as it plays a crucial role in your circadian rhythm or internal clock.
Melatonin is produced by a pea-sized gland in the middle of your brain called the pineal gland. When your circadian rhythms are disrupted, your body produces less melatonin, which reduces your ability to fight cancer.
Melatonin actually helps suppress free radicals that can lead to cancer. (This is why tumors grow faster when you sleep poorly.) It also produces a number of health benefits related to your immune system.
For most people, the pineal gland is totally inactive during the day. But, at night, when you are exposed to darkness, your pineal gland begins producing melatonin to be released into your blood.
Melatonin makes you feel sleepy, and in a normal night's sleep, your melatonin levels stay elevated for about 12 hours (usually between 9 pm and 9 am). Then, as the sun rises and your day begins, your pineal gland reduces your production of melatonin.
The levels in your blood decrease until they're hardly measurable at all. This rise and fall of your melatonin levels are part and parcel of your internal clock that dictates when you’re sleepy and when you feel fully awake.

How to Optimize Your Melatonin and Reset Your Circadian Rhythm

In related news, research² suggests camping could help you reset an internal clock gone haywire from modern living. As reported by the Christian Science Monitor:³

“Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder found that if you live by the sun's schedule, you are more likely to go to bed at least an hour earlier, wake up an hour earlier, and be less groggy, because your internal clock and external reality are more in sync. The sun adjusts your clock to what may be its natural state, undoing the influence of lightbulbs. “

Since humans evolved in the glow of firelight, the yellow, orange and red wavelengths don’t suppress melatonin production the way white and blue wavelengths do. If you want to protect your melatonin cycle, when the sun goes down, you would shift to a low wattage bulb with yellow, orange, or red light.
One good option is using a salt lamp illuminated by a 5-watt bulb. It’s important to realize that turning on a light in the middle of the night, even for a short moment, such as when you get up to go to the bathroom, will disrupt your melatonin production and interfere with your sleep.
Ideally, it is best to increase melatonin levels naturally with exposure to bright sunlight in the daytime (along with full spectrum fluorescent bulbs in the winter) and absolute complete darkness at night. If that isn't possible, you may want to consider a melatonin supplement.
In scientific studies, melatonin has been shown to help people fall asleep faster and stay asleep, experience less restlessness, and prevent daytime fatigue. Keep in mind that only a very small dose is required — typically 0.25 mg or 0.5 mg to start with, and you can adjust it up from there.

Taking higher doses, such as 3 mg, can sometimes make you more wakeful instead of sleepier, so adjust your dose carefully. While melatonin is most commonly used in tablet or spray form, certain foods also contain it. Cherries, for instance, are a natural source of melatonin, and drinking tart cherry juice has been found to be beneficial in improving sleep duration and quality.⁴

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