The Blue-Light Myth, Phase Response Curves, Desynchrony & Jet Lag, Circadian Confessions

So let's dive into the circadian system, which, you know, I think is pretty fascinating in that Relatively speaking, like our understanding, very, very nascent.

And I don't know about the three of you, but when I, it's usually in my session two, you know, after my intake, and I'm at the point where I've just described the homeostatic process.

This is usually in a traditional cognitive behavioral therapy space, but I usually do it in like all sorts of sleep health broadly.

I get really excited when I get to the circadian rhythm portion because I do sprinkle in a little history.

So I'm curious, when you're talking to your clients, Shelby, do you do you sprinkle in a little bit of history about the circadian rhythm or you just kind of dive in that we have this like biological clock? How does that go?

I totally do, because I'm a huge nerd when it comes to sleep history.

And some of the original studies in the early 80s were done by like Sizler, like when he was a postdoc, like at Montefiore.

So like in my old office.

location in the building next door where it used to be.

Like I'll say to patients like right over there where there's probably there's no windows.

That's probably where they did some of the sleep studies initially on looking at circadian timing.

And I'll teach patients about it because I just think it's really interesting.

And I think the more that we know about our biology and the history of how we got there, you get more buy in.

Totally.

And I think it's fascinating, too.

You know, if we go back to the 1700s, we learned about circadian rhythms initially through plants.

Right.

And I'm going to butcher the name and that's OK.

But Jean-Jacques d'Artois de Mehron, Mehron, I believe it is.

I think this was like 1720s or so.

Notice that plants in darkness would actually open and close their petals.

in the absence of sunlight.

And that kind of triggered some thoughts that maybe there might be something going on instead of these external cues dictating the plant's actions.

Maybe there's something internal that's driving the timing, right? And then we jumped ahead about 100 years in the 1800s and Augustine Pyramus de Candolle We're going to go with that.

A Swiss botanist basically, I think, demonstrated that plants may operate on a time window, on a rhythm that's shorter than our solar sun day.

So let's dive into the circadian system, which, you know, I think is pretty fascinating in that Relatively speaking, like our understanding, very, very nascent.

And I don't know about the three of you, but when I, it's usually in my session two, you know, after my intake, and I'm at the point where I've just described the homeostatic process.

This is usually in a traditional cognitive behavioral therapy space, but I usually do it in like all sorts of sleep health broadly.

I get really excited when I get to the circadian rhythm portion because I do sprinkle in a little history.

So I'm curious, when you're talking to your clients, Shelby, do you do you sprinkle in a little bit of history about the circadian rhythm or you just kind of dive in that we have this like biological clock? How does that go?

I totally do, because I'm a huge nerd when it comes to sleep history.

And some of the original studies in the early 80s were done by like Sizler, like when he was a postdoc, like at Montefiore.

So like in my old office.

location in the building next door where it used to be.

Like I'll say to patients like right over there where there's probably there's no windows.

That's probably where they did some of the sleep studies initially on looking at circadian timing.

And I'll teach patients about it because I just think it's really interesting.

And I think the more that we know about our biology and the history of how we got there, you get more buy in.

Totally.

And I think it's fascinating, too.

You know, if we go back to the 1700s, we learned about circadian rhythms initially through plants.

Right.

And I'm going to butcher the name and that's OK.

But Jean-Jacques d'Artois de Mehron, Mehron, I believe it is.

I think this was like 1720s or so.

Notice that plants in darkness would actually open and close their petals.

in the absence of sunlight.

And that kind of triggered some thoughts that maybe there might be something going on instead of these external cues dictating the plant's actions.

Maybe there's something internal that's driving the timing, right? And then we jumped ahead about 100 years in the 1800s and Augustine Pyramus de Candolle We're going to go with that.

A Swiss botanist basically, I think, demonstrated that plants may operate on a time window, on a rhythm that's shorter than our solar sun day.