Latest / Clearly Hormonal / Ep 18: The Power of Your Internal Clocks: How Circadian Rhythms Shape Our Health with Lynne Peeples

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Ep 18: The Power of Your Internal Clocks: How Circadian Rhythms Shape Our Health with Lynne Peeples · Clearly Hormonal

• 0:01
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Welcome to the Reset Recharge podcast with your host, Dr.
• 0:05
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Komal Patil Sisodia, a board certified endocrinologist, internist, and obesity medicine specialist.
• 0:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: This podcast is focused on empowering women's health and aims to help you reset your understanding of your metabolic health.
• 0:18
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And recharge the conversations you are having with your healthcare providers.
• 0:22
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: While I am a physician, this podcast is purely for educational purposes.
• 0:26
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: No individualized medical advice is being given on this podcast.
• 0:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: If you do find information that is helpful, please discuss it with your healthcare provider at your next visit.
• 0:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Hi everyone.
• 0:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Welcome back to Reset Recharge.
• 0:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Today.
• 0:44
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I am so excited to have Lynne Peoples, who is a dear friend of mine.
• 0:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We have known each other since we were 15 years old, right?
• 0:52
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We got into a lot of high school shenanigans.
• 0:56
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We volunteered together.
• 0:57
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: YEah, just lots of adventures over the years.
• 1:00
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And she has written a book that was published in the fall and I think we've been trying to coordinate schedules for a while to have you on the podcast.
• 1:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I was so excited when I heard the topic of your book, which is all about circadian rhythms.
• 1:14
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So the title of Lynne's book is called The Inner Clock.
• 1:18
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Living in sync with our circadian rhythms.
• 1:20
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I had the pleasure of reading it.
• 1:22
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I found it absolutely fascinating as an endocrinologist.
• 1:25
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So many of our hormones that are tied to circadian rhythms, if not all of them.
• 1:29
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And it was just interesting to me that it went beyond.
• 1:33
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Lynne is extremely accomplished.
• 1:35
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: She went to St.
• 1:36
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Olaf in Minnesota for her undergrad and completed.
• 1:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Two master's degree, one in biostatistics from Harvard, and the other one in science journalism from NYU, and she is also an mIT, Knight Science Journalism Fellow.
• 1:52
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Which is amazing.
• 1:53
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I have watched you go from, being a biostatistician and working on HIV studies to now, this is your second career in terms of being a science writer, correct?
• 2:04
  Lynne Peeples: That is right.
• 2:05
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 2:06
  Lynne Peeples: A mutual admiration your career too.
• 2:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: You are, you're so sweet.
• 2:12
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It brings me such joy to see one of my dearest friends live out her dream in this way, and really I.
• 2:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Come out with such an incredible piece of written word around science and something that I can connect with, something that I can use when I'm thinking about my patients and try and implement in my own personal life.
• 2:33
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Because there are a lot of things I learned in there, Lynne, that I was not really expecting.
• 2:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I think of it like I'm very siloed in my mind, like circadian rhythms plus hormones.
• 2:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I don't think I really fully understood the extent of what you wrote about in your book until I read it all the way through and I had some time to process.
• 2:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So I'd love to hear from you in your words, one, how did you get interested in this?
• 2:56
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Circadian rhythms is such an, I find it a fascinating topic, but it's just the average person.
• 3:02
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I don't know that they've heard of it.
• 3:04
  Lynne Peeples: Oh, totally.
• 3:05
  Lynne Peeples: I mean, that I hadn't really either, I heard about it associated with sleep.
• 3:10
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, but not beyond that.
• 3:13
  Lynne Peeples: And so I guess the origin story the short version of it is, we grew up in Seattle, right?
• 3:18
  Lynne Peeples: Where it is dark a lot of the year.
• 3:22
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 3:22
  Lynne Peeples: Winter days are incredibly short.
• 3:25
  Lynne Peeples: And speaking of high school, through the winter time we'd go to school and it would be dark.
• 3:31
  Lynne Peeples: I,
• 3:31
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: yes.
• 3:32
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's so interesting to me now that there are studies showing that we were not meant to be up that early.
• 3:39
  Lynne Peeples: No.
• 3:40
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, once we hit our teenage years, our circadian rhythms naturally drift later.
• 3:46
  Lynne Peeples: And that's the years that we are forced to go to school earlier.
• 3:49
  Lynne Peeples: So completely biologically
• 3:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: backwards.
• 3:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It was like seven 20 or something.
• 3:53
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Ous, right?
• 3:54
  Lynne Peeples: Yes.
• 3:55
  Lynne Peeples: And some schools now are delaying those start times.
• 3:58
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 3:58
  Lynne Peeples: But some are not.
• 3:59
  Lynne Peeples: I was just at a Renton High school.
• 4:01
  Lynne Peeples: So Renton for listeners is just south of Seattle.
• 4:04
  Lynne Peeples: And.
• 4:05
  Lynne Peeples: That school started at 7 25, I think.
• 4:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Wow.
• 4:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And that's a high school?
• 4:09
  Lynne Peeples: A high school.
• 4:10
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 4:10
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 4:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So my son's middle school this year decided to shift to middle school earlier so that the high school students could sleep later.
• 4:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So her kid Roen has to go to school by 7:50 AM
• 4:25
  Okay.
• 4:25
  He just
• 4:25
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: turned 13, so I can't imagine like 13.
• 4:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Is that different than what you do in high school?
• 4:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Every morning we're on the struggle bus.
• 4:32
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Mm-hmm.
• 4:33
  Lynne Peeples: That's really rough.
• 4:33
  Lynne Peeples: Elementary school kids, maybe they actually naturally get up earlier, but by 13.
• 4:38
  Lynne Peeples: It's like beginning of the NightOwl years so we experienced that and I certainly didn't.
• 4:45
  Lynne Peeples: Anything with circadian rhythm disruption.
• 4:47
  Lynne Peeples: But I was feeling the drag, not sleeping well and feeling a little madic depressive between summer and winter.
• 4:55
  Lynne Peeples: And I think there was a few components.
• 4:58
  Lynne Peeples: 'cause when I went to school in Minnesota.
• 5:01
  Lynne Peeples: Minnesota.
• 5:02
  Yeah.
• 5:03
  Lynne Peeples: Extremely cold.
• 5:04
  Lynne Peeples: Everybody thought I was kind of crazy to go to school there, but the winters were bright, you know It was snow on the ground.
• 5:10
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, blue sky.
• 5:11
  Lynne Peeples: It just was uplifting and I like, felt like I could think clear sleep better.
• 5:16
  Lynne Peeples: I.
• 5:16
  Lynne Peeples: Again, not making any connections.
• 5:18
  Lynne Peeples: No.
• 5:18
  Lynne Peeples: Then it was when I moved back to Seattle 10 years ago I guess this was about eight years ago that I had a chance to tour the Seattle Mariners, like baseball stadium and their locker room.
• 5:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: How cool.
• 5:31
  Lynne Peeples: And the locker room they had just installed.
• 5:35
  Lynne Peeples: Fancy new lights.
• 5:37
  Oh wow.
• 5:37
  That,
• 5:38
  Lynne Peeples: They could adjust in the color and the intensity so, I think you probably heard this story when you've read about it, but Yeah.
• 5:45
  Lynne Peeples: So they would have the lights set to be bright and blue and rich color before the games.
• 5:49
  Lynne Peeples: With the idea that this would help energize the players.
• 5:53
  Lynne Peeples: And then after interesting games, they would dim'em and warm'em to help them calm down and go to sleep.
• 5:59
  Lynne Peeples: And they were talking about how this would help their circadian rhythms.
• 6:02
  Lynne Peeples: And it was just at that point, well, A, that was just weird and fascinating.
• 6:06
  Lynne Peeples: And then B, make thinking about this and thinking about the connections and being back in Seattle and feeling more of that drag again and wondering what was here.
• 6:14
  Lynne Peeples: Was there something here that.
• 6:16
  Lynne Peeples: Know could help me.
• 6:17
  Yeah.
• 6:18
  And then
• 6:18
  Lynne Peeples: I also, nerd out on, because this is
• 6:20
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: right.
• 6:21
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Did it
• 6:21
  Lynne Peeples: help the Mariners that season?
• 6:22
  Lynne Peeples: I don't think so.
• 6:23
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 6:26
  Lynne Peeples: We always feel right now they start of a season, like maybe this year.
• 6:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 6:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: No it is very of a down.
• 6:31
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Their history has been somewhat up and down.
• 6:33
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We had some glory years and then some not right.
• 6:36
  Lynne Peeples: And still no World Series.
• 6:37
  Lynne Peeples: Maybe just, maybe we just
• 6:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: need to tweak those flights.
• 6:40
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Exactly.
• 6:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Exactly right.
• 6:42
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: They were onto something.
• 6:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We were we're just at the tip of the ice here.
• 6:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That's right.
• 6:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That's right.
• 6:47
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's interesting that you say that about Minnesota.
• 6:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I felt the same way about being in up.
• 6:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: State, New York.
• 6:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 6:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Because we both went to very cold places and people were like, what are you doing?
• 6:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I remember showing up in New York and it's snowing and I thought school would be canceled'cause Seattle doesn't handle snow very well.
• 7:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And everybody just kinda laughed at me and told me to put my boots on and start walking.
• 7:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But I was actually more upbeat despite the cold because there were periods of sunshine and I don't think we were used to that growing up.
• 7:15
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So that's a very, that's a very interesting observation.
• 7:19
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 7:19
  Lynne Peeples: No, you don't know until you're put into a different environment, you can see,
• 7:23
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: feel that difference.
• 7:23
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And yet we both still move back here.
• 7:26
  Lynne Peeples: I know.
• 7:26
  Lynne Peeples: What's,
• 7:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I dunno that, that being said, the Pacific Northwest, if you've never been, is a magical place.
• 7:32
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It is really, truly beautiful.
• 7:34
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And yeah, it, there's no place like home, I guess you could say.
• 7:38
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That's a hundred percent true.
• 7:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 7:40
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 7:40
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We put up so you started to notice this, and I loved that passage in your book by the way.
• 7:45
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And then what were your next steps as you started wondering about this?
• 7:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: How did you go into learning more about circadian rhythms and what did you find?
• 7:53
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, so that.
• 7:55
  Lynne Peeples: Visit to the locker room led me down the path of just learning about lighting and the impacts of light on our circadian rhythms and what that does.
• 8:05
  Lynne Peeples: So I ended up writing a story about that for an online magazine on dark.
• 8:09
  Lynne Peeples: I.
• 8:10
  Lynne Peeples: And it's like through those conversations with circadian scientists, they started talking about all these other tangential things.
• 8:17
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 8:17
  Lynne Peeples: Related to circadian rhythms and what they drive, as far as our physiology and what kind of health consequences there can be when those get thrown off.
• 8:26
  Lynne Peeples: And I learned about circadian medicine which I then did another feature story for nature on that was specific to this idea that.
• 8:34
  Lynne Peeples: When you take a medication or when you undergo surgery or another treatment can affect how effective it is including side effects, so you could, improve how well the drug works, decrease the side effects based on the time of day.
• 8:49
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 8:50
  Lynne Peeples: That the drug has taken, and that was fascinating to me.
• 8:52
  Lynne Peeples: First I'd heard of that.
• 8:53
  Lynne Peeples: So it was just at that point it was just snowballing.
• 8:55
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 8:56
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 8:57
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So many, yeah there's so many applications for this thing that we thought was just in a little box.
• 9:02
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And it's interesting that you bring up the medicine thing because I remember a few years ago not a few years ago, more than I, I've been practicing medicine longer than I care to admit.
• 9:10
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Several years ago when a certain class of medications came out for diabetes we were told to instruct patients to take it with their first meal of the day because it works better than if they took it later in the day.
• 9:22
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And so that was actually included in the studies.
• 9:24
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And those are the SGLT two inhibitors that.
• 9:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay.
• 9:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That it was one of the newer class of medications.
• 9:31
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So I actually need to look into that and see if there were any circadian rhythm studies.
• 9:35
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But in your book you talked about a chemo drug that was, that had, that showed benefit if it was infused earlier in the day compared to later.
• 9:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Can you talk a little bit about that?
• 9:47
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: 'cause I thought that was so fascinating.
• 9:49
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, so there's probably a few.
• 9:50
  Lynne Peeples: The one that I, that's coming to mind for me, was a drug for glioblastoma.
• 9:55
  Lynne Peeples: That I talk about in the book where this drug is the main go-to for this horrendous, form of cancers.
• 10:02
  Lynne Peeples: The one that took my mom.
• 10:04
  Lynne Peeples: So obviously really close to home, but the, this drug was approved because studies showed that it extended survival by two and a half months.
• 10:11
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 10:11
  Lynne Peeples: So that's where the DA approval came from.
• 10:13
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 10:13
  Lynne Peeples: This drug they found, and I'm hoping I don't reverse this because I can't remember which direction it went, but I believe it was if a patient took it in the morning versus afternoon.
• 10:23
  Lynne Peeples: The survival was extended by three and a half months.
• 10:27
  Oh, wow.
• 10:28
  Lynne Peeples: So even more than what, the FDA granted approval for.
• 10:31
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 10:31
  Lynne Peeples: So a substantial improvement based on the time of day that, that that so interesting.
• 10:38
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 10:38
  Lynne Peeples: And that this was a retrospective study.
• 10:40
  Lynne Peeples: I should point out now they're carrying on a clinical trial to confirm those findings and get a, get some more detail but this is, yeah.
• 10:47
  Lynne Peeples: This is coming up every, it seems like anytime the scientists start looking Yeah.
• 10:51
  Lynne Peeples: Research, start looking for a difference, they're finding them.
• 10:54
  Yeah.
• 10:54
  And it's,
• 10:55
  Lynne Peeples: unfortunately, it's not gonna be the same, for a certain condition, a certain drug.
• 10:59
  Lynne Peeples: There's so many.
• 11:01
  Variations parts, but yeah.
• 11:03
  Lynne Peeples: As soon as we find more efficient ways to look for these things and identify'em and make it cost effective to include that variable of time in clinical trials, yeah, it could really pay off.
• 11:13
  Lynne Peeples: It seems
• 11:14
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That's fascinating.
• 11:16
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I hope they start pushing that more into the trials because.
• 11:21
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: If a drug has the potential to work better than even what its FDA approval was for, that is life changing for so many people, right?
• 11:29
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: You think about the quality of life and the amount of time they get with their family members, comparatively, that's really stunning to hear.
• 11:36
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: You also talk about this concept of chronotypes, right?
• 11:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I always used to think about circadian rhythm as this big kind of nebulous, like there's one inner clock and then I read your book and I was like, oh, there are made me more clocks than one.
• 11:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I didn't know what a chronotype was.
• 11:53
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So could you explain that for our listeners, because I found that really fascinating.
• 11:57
  Lynne Peeples: We'll start with, the inner clock.
• 11:59
  Lynne Peeples: So apologies for my title of my book, which may lead some people as strike'cause it's not singular.
• 12:05
  Lynne Peeples: It is, as you alluded to, multiple clocks.
• 12:08
  Lynne Peeples: In fact, we've got like trillions of clocks in our bodies.
• 12:12
  Lynne Peeples: 'cause every cell just about has a clock.
• 12:16
  Lynne Peeples: And so we have this system.
• 12:18
  Lynne Peeples: It's essentially, some scientists compare it to the symphony of clocks in our body where there is a.
• 12:24
  Lynne Peeples: Quote unquote master clock in the brain.
• 12:27
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, there's some nuance there.
• 12:28
  Lynne Peeples: It's not always running the show, but generally speaking, there's this clock that is sort of coordinating all these other clocks in our body systems and it's all, and it's, that's the clock that's pulling information from the environment primarily through light and dark, to tell the body what time it is on the earthly 24 hour day and those, that communication system is then helping the body.
• 12:50
  Lynne Peeples: Prime itself to do certain things at certain times of day in an optimal way.
• 12:55
  Lynne Peeples: And it's not one clock, it's many clocks.
• 12:58
  Lynne Peeples: It's circadian rhythms.
• 13:00
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 13:01
  Lynne Peeples: And, but it's all in an ideal world that coordinated together and to do, these right things at the right times.
• 13:09
  Lynne Peeples: The term circadian.
• 13:10
  Lynne Peeples: This was interesting when I made the connection, but that circa means around or about.
• 13:15
  Lynne Peeples: And the reason for that is because naturally our clocks all tick a little differently and none of us, well, maybe there's, in statistically speaking, there's somebody, none of our clocks tick exactly 24 hours a day.
• 13:29
  Lynne Peeples: On their own.
• 13:30
  Lynne Peeples: Interesting.
• 13:31
  That's why we
• 13:31
  Lynne Peeples: need this regular calibration.
• 13:34
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 13:34
  Lynne Peeples: With inputs from our environment to try to keep it reigned into the hours of our planet and we all tick differently, which means that running on our own.
• 13:45
  Yeah.
• 13:45
  We
• 13:45
  Lynne Peeples: have different.
• 13:47
  Lynne Peeples: Chronotypes, this is the term the scientists have come up with to describe our differences.
• 13:51
  Lynne Peeples: So it, that's a difference in how your clocks tick.
• 13:54
  Lynne Peeples: It's also influenced by how those clocks are connected to light or how light influences how they tick.
• 14:02
  Lynne Peeples: So there's a few things that make us tick uniquely, but that chronotype we might.
• 14:08
  Lynne Peeples: Know, more likely use terms like early bird or night owl.
• 14:12
  Lynne Peeples: That's essentially describing our chronotype.
• 14:15
  Lynne Peeples: So if your clocks tick a little faster than 24 hours, you're probably an early bird.
• 14:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 14:20
  Lynne Peeples: It's longer.
• 14:20
  Lynne Peeples: You're a night owl.
• 14:21
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 14:22
  Lynne Peeples: And there's everything in between.
• 14:25
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 14:25
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That And how do you tell which one you are?
• 14:27
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Is there any good way for us to be able to figure out, or is that just observing your own habits?
• 14:33
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, well, it's a mix.
• 14:34
  Lynne Peeples: There are questionnaires out there you can take to try to decipher.
• 14:39
  Lynne Peeples: But it's also, because of the way society schedules influence how we live our days, it's kind of hard to.
• 14:46
  Lynne Peeples: Tease out what our natural rhythms are unless you're a retiree, maybe.
• 14:50
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 14:51
  Lynne Peeples: So what I recommend is when people, when you go on vacation, if you have an extended time in which you're not having to set an alarm clock.
• 14:59
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 14:59
  Lynne Peeples: To get up at a certain time.
• 15:00
  Lynne Peeples: Just see what your body naturally wants to do, see when you wanna go to bed, when you wanna wake up and that should.
• 15:06
  Lynne Peeples: Give you the better, idea.
• 15:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Interesting.
• 15:09
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I feel like our clocks, our inner clocks get all screwed up with how we work, right?
• 15:15
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I think residency was a rough time.
• 15:18
  Lynne Peeples: Oh gosh.
• 15:18
  Lynne Peeples: I can't imagine.
• 15:20
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: My intern year, I think we were on call every fourth night overnight in the hospital and it was.
• 15:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It was wild.
• 15:29
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I used to be able to sleep through anything, and when I say anything, I mean anything.
• 15:34
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I was an RA in the dorms and I don't know if I ever told you this story, but I had to put a heavy sleeper sticker on my door because I wouldn't wake up for the fire alarms, and it was literally my job to evacuate the dorm.
• 15:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Oh my gosh.
• 15:47
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: No, I did not know that Ido when they went to make sure I get up and go out with my clipboard and make sure everybody was accounted for.
• 15:54
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But yeah, it was great.
• 15:56
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Like I could sleep anywhere anyhow, any which way.
• 15:59
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I would say med school residency was kind of the start of everything going topsy-turvy.
• 16:05
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: For me.
• 16:06
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: There was a passage in your book about night shift workers or people who are shift workers in general and what that does to their clocks and in the world that we live in now, even if you're not a shift worker, like for example, we live in the Pacific Northwest.
• 16:21
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I see a lot of software engineers as my patients who are working like 10 to 14 hour days, and then they try and go to sleep, but then they have to take like a 2:00 AM call to somewhere else in the world and then try and go back to sleep How do all of those shifts and all of the things that we're doing to ourselves in modern life affect our circadian rhythms?
• 16:40
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And then can that change your chronotype?
• 16:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So, two part question.
• 16:44
  Lynne Peeples: That's good questions.
• 16:45
  Lynne Peeples: I think that was largely the impetus here to get this information out there is.
• 16:50
  Lynne Peeples: So our circadian rhythms, it's sort of this subtle thing going on in the background.
• 16:54
  Lynne Peeples: There's that analogy where it's, putting your hand on the hot stove versus the frog and boiling water.
• 16:58
  Lynne Peeples: So this is more the frog and boiling water situation.
• 17:00
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Lynne Peeples: And we are throwing our clocks out of whack in so many ways and we're not necessarily making the connection'cause it's not this black and white thing and, all of us to some extent, whether we're just, whether our job is indoors.
• 17:15
  Lynne Peeples: Most of us on average spend 90 plus percent of our time indoors.
• 17:19
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 17:19
  Lynne Peeples: So we're outside of the natural cues that are keeping our clocks in sync.
• 17:23
  Lynne Peeples: And then, yeah, if you're doing shift work, that's, sadly, the worst situation.
• 17:28
  Lynne Peeples: 'cause you're living against your clocks.
• 17:30
  Lynne Peeples: You're, depending on your chronotype.
• 17:33
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 17:33
  Lynne Peeples: Most of us are designed to be awake and doing things during the daylight hours.
• 17:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah,
• 17:39
  Lynne Peeples: and sleeping at night, and one of the things in particular scientists are learning is that we should really only be eating.
• 17:46
  Lynne Peeples: During the daylight hours, our metabolism is very closely linked into, you know, it has an ebb and flow circadian rhythm where it's work.
• 17:54
  Lynne Peeples: Sometimes it's working better than others, and it's working best, usually like late morning, early afternoon daylight hours and leaning earlier.
• 18:01
  Lynne Peeples: And if you're a night shift worker and you're up at night and you're eating at night, that's just throwing all those things off and can lead to a host of, potential increased risks of chronic diseases.
• 18:12
  Lynne Peeples: Then as far as the chronotype question, so we, again, we all tick differently.
• 18:17
  Lynne Peeples: This is biologically determined.
• 18:19
  Lynne Peeples: Mm-hmm.
• 18:19
  Lynne Peeples: We have genetics and, determine how our clocks are ticking.
• 18:24
  Lynne Peeples: But within that, there is malleability because our environment and our behavior also influenced our chronotype.
• 18:31
  Lynne Peeples: So interesting.
• 18:33
  Lynne Peeples: If you are, let's say you're, you lean slightly night owl in modern society, you might actually be more of an extreme night owl because if you're not getting that light particularly early in the day to kind of rain in your clock closer to 24 hours, it's gonna drift even later.
• 18:49
  Lynne Peeples: And you can get this sort of snowball effect where you're up late under artificial light, you sleep in, you miss the morning light, and you can become even more extreme of a night owl.
• 18:58
  Lynne Peeples: But as far as a shift worker, like you have some malleability based on what, when you expose yourself to light
• 19:04
  Yeah, try
• 19:05
  Lynne Peeples: to get a little closer to your work, the work schedule.
• 19:07
  Lynne Peeples: But it's really a tough, tough situation.
• 19:10
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah, I have a lot of patients and colleagues actually right in the medical field.
• 19:15
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I think were the worst, like for anybody that has to work the night shift, it's hard.
• 19:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 19:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I've worked as a hospitalist for a little bit, and if you ever go into one of those break rooms, it's, tons of food that's back there and people are eating in the middle of the night and then trying to get to a more normal.
• 19:33
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Scheduled during the day and maybe not getting enough, as much sleep as they should.
• 19:37
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I personally see those effects for metabolic disease in my patients that come and see me, right?
• 19:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Because they're up all night.
• 19:45
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That affects cortisol.
• 19:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And cortisol is secreted on a circadian rhythm where it's highest in the morning.
• 19:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And then it bottoms out before you go to bed if you are sleeping on a normal sleep wake cycle.
• 19:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But if you're.
• 19:56
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Up and doing things constantly.
• 19:59
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's kind of like your cortisol is high all the time, and then you get the weight gain and the high blood pressure and the high blood sugar and all of the bad things that come along with it.
• 20:07
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Has there been any application of like circadian science to try and help people with these metabolic disorders or, it, it's probably hard to do unless they actually change.
• 20:21
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Their habits and their life.
• 20:22
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, I guess the studies so far, a lot of'em, there's been a series of studies out of the Salk Institute in California and a among others, but I think they started doing some of the first, looking at what's called time restricted eating and the impact of that on metabolic disease.
• 20:39
  Lynne Peeples: Both kinda the idea of prevention versus treatment and.
• 20:44
  Lynne Peeples: They're finding that consolidating or constricting the hours that people eat can potentially help quite a bit.
• 20:53
  Lynne Peeples: Especially raining in those later night calories and shrinking the window at which.
• 20:59
  Lynne Peeples: People are taking in calories.
• 21:01
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So that's very similar to the concept of intermittent fasting or is It is, yeah.
• 21:04
  Lynne Peeples: But there are some subtle differences in which, I mean, it's really about consistency, trying to keep that same window and when that window is aligning with circadian rhythms.
• 21:16
  Lynne Peeples: So there's that.
• 21:17
  Lynne Peeples: Oh man.
• 21:17
  Lynne Peeples: Along those lines, there's some really fascinating studies.
• 21:20
  Lynne Peeples: These are in animals so far.
• 21:22
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 21:22
  Lynne Peeples: But looking at longevity, so they had Oh, interesting.
• 21:25
  Lynne Peeples: I think it was mice.
• 21:27
  Lynne Peeples: Restricted to eating, only had food available for 12 hours.
• 21:30
  Lynne Peeples: And that was constricted to their, to our nighttime.
• 21:33
  Lynne Peeples: Their daytime.
• 21:34
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 21:34
  Lynne Peeples: And they, that extended survival by 35% for those
• 21:38
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Oh, wow.
• 21:39
  Lynne Peeples: Based on the same caloric intake, but just restricting that to those hours.
• 21:43
  Lynne Peeples: That hours.
• 21:44
  Lynne Peeples: And they think, you know, links with inflammation.
• 21:47
  Lynne Peeples: Metabolic disease.
• 21:49
  Lynne Peeples: A lot of these things tie to the metabolic rhythms.
• 21:53
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Now for humans who are on a, what we call a quote unquote normal schedule, right?
• 21:58
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Mm-hmm.
• 21:58
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: What does that look like in terms of circadian science?
• 22:02
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Around what time should we be eating?
• 22:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: What time should we be fueling our bodies so that they're functioning optimally and not disrupting the clocks?
• 22:10
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 22:10
  Lynne Peeples: The.
• 22:11
  Lynne Peeples: Consensus I've gotten from the scientists as far as like the most rational, practical approach.
• 22:17
  Lynne Peeples: 'cause I did talk to some scientists who were eating in six hour windows during the day.
• 22:21
  Lynne Peeples: That's not,
• 22:22
  no,
• 22:23
  Lynne Peeples: most of us are not gonna be able to do that.
• 22:26
  Lynne Peeples: I would be hangry and mean Exactly.
• 22:28
  Lynne Peeples: So they think about 10 hours, if that's doable.
• 22:31
  Lynne Peeples: I mean, 12, if you, still has benefits over 14, 15.
• 22:34
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 22:35
  Lynne Peeples: The tighter you could shrink that, but maybe 10 would be ideal leaning earlier.
• 22:40
  Lynne Peeples: Maybe that would be from like.
• 22:42
  Lynne Peeples: 9:00 AM let's see, to 7:00 PM something like that.
• 22:47
  Lynne Peeples: A window, so you can have like maybe a slightly earlier dinner.
• 22:51
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 22:51
  Lynne Peeples: Maybe give yourself a little time after you get up in the morning, before you immediately put food in your mouth.
• 22:56
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 22:57
  Lynne Peeples: Sad thing is they found, on average in American Eats over about a 15 hour window.
• 23:01
  Lynne Peeples: Really?
• 23:02
  Lynne Peeples: And I hadn't thought about it, but that was probably me because I would, yeah.
• 23:05
  Lynne Peeples: I'd snack or.
• 23:07
  Lynne Peeples: Maybe have a sip of wine before bed.
• 23:09
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 23:09
  Lynne Peeples: Like not too long before bed, and that all counts.
• 23:12
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 23:12
  Lynne Peeples: So it's just really any calories.
• 23:14
  Lynne Peeples: So yeah, like aiming for about 10 hours is ideal.
• 23:18
  Lynne Peeples: And again, most of the research is suggesting that our systems are most ready to handle those incoming calories.
• 23:24
  Lynne Peeples: Like late morning, early afternoon is okay.
• 23:26
  Lynne Peeples: That's when maybe we should have the bigger meal.
• 23:29
  Lynne Peeples: So kind of the reverse of the typical American diet in which we have the mm-hmm.
• 23:32
  Lynne Peeples: The big dinner.
• 23:33
  Lynne Peeples: So maybe having the bigger meal earlier in the day.
• 23:36
  Okay,
• 23:36
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: that ma, that makes sense.
• 23:38
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And it actually kind of aligns with what we see with the intermittent fasting principles that have been put out there.
• 23:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: The 10 14 they find is actually pretty ideal for women.
• 23:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And restricting beyond that can be hard.
• 23:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay.
• 23:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And may not actually yield the same benefits.
• 23:53
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So there, I have some patients who try like the.
• 23:56
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Eight and 16 hour and only eating in an eight hour window.
• 24:00
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I, I don't know that there's a huge benefit.
• 24:02
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So it sounds like the circadian science actually kind of matches with that.
• 24:06
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's just more, the timing I don't think was quite set some people will try and do it from 12 to eight or 12 to 10, which seems so far off the cuff for what your body needs from an inner clock standpoint
• 24:20
  Lynne Peeples: right.
• 24:20
  Lynne Peeples: And then I guess it depends on your chronotype too, right?
• 24:22
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 24:22
  Lynne Peeples: Because if you are somebody who's.
• 24:24
  Lynne Peeples: A late night owl and you don't have to get up, up early in the morning and you're up till midnight.
• 24:28
  Lynne Peeples: Then maybe you, be a little later, but yeah.
• 24:30
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 24:30
  Lynne Peeples: Oh, that's interesting.
• 24:31
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 24:32
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, so that's great.
• 24:32
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Lynne Peeples: The sciences align.
• 24:35
  Lynne Peeples: Yes.
• 24:35
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We're learning things.
• 24:36
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I love this.
• 24:38
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about hormones.
• 24:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I'm an endocrinologist and you and I have talked about this.
• 24:44
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: On and off for a few years now.
• 24:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I think while you were writing your book we were, yeah.
• 24:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We were changing a few little tidbits here and there, and I would love to hear, just from your perspective, because, I always tell my patients that women go through so many hormonal changes in their lifetime.
• 25:00
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Really, change is the only constant for us when it comes to our hormones.
• 25:05
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: You have childhood and puberty and reproductive years and perimenopause.
• 25:10
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: The short period of menopause and post menopause, it's a constant change.
• 25:16
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And how, what do we know about circadian rhythms and hormone changes in people in general?
• 25:24
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's a tough question.
• 25:25
  Lynne Peeples: I think scientists are still sorting it out, but we do know that the Ian.
• 25:29
  Lynne Peeples: So kidney rhythms are driving hormonal ebbs and flows.
• 25:33
  Lynne Peeples: All the time.
• 25:34
  Lynne Peeples: And as you alluded to, women get to go through a lot more of those changes.
• 25:39
  Lynne Peeples: Yes, we do.
• 25:40
  Lynne Peeples: To their lives.
• 25:41
  Lynne Peeples: And we know, this science is pretty strong at this point, that estrogen in particular is really important to have for robust circadian rhythms.
• 25:51
  Lynne Peeples: So when a woman hits.
• 25:53
  Lynne Peeples: Midlife goes through perimenopause, menopause suggested our rhythms will more naturally start to dampen.
• 26:01
  Lynne Peeples: And there's some interesting new science out there looking at how that is linked with, a crazy rise in risk for metabolic disease that hits at that time.
• 26:12
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 26:13
  Lynne Peeples: And then And more sleep troubles.
• 26:15
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 26:16
  Lynne Peeples: And changes in eating patterns.
• 26:18
  Lynne Peeples: So there's evidence to suggest that might be at least partially explained by these dampened circadian rhythms.
• 26:26
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And can you explain what you mean by dampen circadian rhythms?
• 26:29
  Lynne Peeples: Sure.
• 26:30
  Lynne Peeples: So when we think of a circadian rhythm, again, all our body systems have some rhythm throughout the day, and if we're thinking about a hormone it's going to rise in concentration and drop.
• 26:40
  Lynne Peeples: So you got the rise and fall on that amplitude between the highest point and lowest point that is going to shrink.
• 26:47
  Lynne Peeples: So you're just, you're losing rhythm essentially, so you're just you're not having those highs and lows to the same extent throughout the day.
• 26:54
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 26:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's like trying to get geared up to go and you don't quite make it to where you would normally achieve.
• 27:01
  Lynne Peeples: Exactly.
• 27:02
  Lynne Peeples: Right.
• 27:03
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 27:03
  Lynne Peeples: So when you got, melatonin, all these hormones in our body are.
• 27:07
  Lynne Peeples: Or have, naturally an ebb and flow that we just, we start to lose as we get older.
• 27:12
  Lynne Peeples: And, men are experiencing this to some point too, but women, when we hit that, those menopausal years, it's just a really, it's a quick drop and that, yeah.
• 27:21
  Lynne Peeples: So that is also pointing us to some ideas of how maybe we could help alleviate some of those.
• 27:28
  Lynne Peeples: Consequences or, risk factors associated with hitting menopause by trying to help women Yeah.
• 27:35
  Lynne Peeples: Increase their circadian rhythms with increasing the input of environmental cues.
• 27:40
  Lynne Peeples: Like light and dark.
• 27:42
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 27:42
  Lynne Peeples: Or by trying to, try and time restricted eating intermittent past call,
• 27:46
  yeah.
• 27:47
  Lynne Peeples: Trying to manipulate or,
• 27:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: yeah.
• 27:49
  Lynne Peeples: How are our rhythms?
• 27:50
  Lynne Peeples: Even if it's artificially?
• 27:51
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Well, you and I are both in the thick of midlife now.
• 27:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Having known each other for many years, I think 30 years.
• 27:59
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: We've been friends, which is wild.
• 28:01
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's
• 28:01
  15 to 45.
• 28:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Wow.
• 28:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I know.
• 28:04
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I know.
• 28:04
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: From your perspective now, having studied this, yeah.
• 28:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: What are things that you are implementing in your own life?
• 28:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: What do you think that our listeners who are going through.
• 28:14
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: The same things that we are can implement, right?
• 28:16
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: There's so many things we don't necessarily talk about or understand in terms of how our environment is affecting us and the things that we're doing to quote unquote relax may actually be harming us like doom, scrolling through social media.
• 28:31
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Can we wine at the end of the, sometimes late at night to unwind?
• 28:37
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: There's so many things that we do that I don't think that we fully understand the implications of.
• 28:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So I'd love to hear from your words, like what are things that you found in the research?
• 28:44
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: What are things that you are implementing in your life to, to try and help your circadian rhythms?
• 28:50
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, I think, these are applicable to everyone, but yeah.
• 28:53
  Lynne Peeples: In particular, I think, yeah.
• 28:55
  Lynne Peeples: Good life women.
• 28:57
  Lynne Peeples: So I, yeah, I break it down and you probably heard the three Cs.
• 29:00
  Lynne Peeples: So the first bean contrast.
• 29:02
  Lynne Peeples: So I've been trying to increase the contrast of light
• 29:06
  Yes.
• 29:06
  And
• 29:06
  Lynne Peeples: dark in my days.
• 29:07
  Lynne Peeples: So brightening my days.
• 29:09
  Lynne Peeples: Particular the morning.
• 29:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 29:12
  Lynne Peeples: So that's maybe getting outside for 10 minutes, even if it's not a bright sunny day, know it's gonna be way brighter and more blue wavelengths outdoors than indoors.
• 29:21
  Lynne Peeples: And just trying to be by a window trying to supplement with there's newer LED lights.
• 29:27
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 29:27
  Lynne Peeples: That are better at mimicking the sun and then at the end of the day, just really turning off the lights and I now have electric candles around my apartment that all turn on my
• 29:37
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: God to warm up the light.
• 29:39
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 29:39
  Lynne Peeples: You want to turn off in particular overhead lights.
• 29:42
  Lynne Peeples: I hadn't really paid attention to this, but most of our indoor environments.
• 29:46
  Lynne Peeples: They're the same at during the day and at night.
• 29:48
  Lynne Peeples: We got these bright O LEDs overhead now.
• 29:50
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 29:51
  Lynne Peeples: But, so turning those off table lamps.
• 29:53
  Lynne Peeples: Especially with like warmer, more incandescent like lights.
• 29:56
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 29:57
  Lynne Peeples: And then candles.
• 29:58
  Lynne Peeples: I, you know, it's just cozy.
• 30:00
  Lynne Peeples: I love that.
• 30:00
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 30:01
  Lynne Peeples: Telling the body that it's nighttime.
• 30:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That makes sense.
• 30:04
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And you said something interesting that I want to circle back to really quickly before you go to the other two seas.
• 30:09
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: You said something about blue light, and for a while there was this fad of blue light blocking glasses.
• 30:15
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It sounds like we should be getting blue light earlier in the day from what you're telling me and.
• 30:20
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Should I go change out all my glasses to not be blue by pocket?
• 30:25
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So it's a selfish question here.
• 30:26
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 30:27
  Lynne Peeples: Well if you're talking about like the eyeglass code.
• 30:29
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:29
  Lynne Peeples: Yes.
• 30:30
  Lynne Peeples: Um, oh my gosh.
• 30:31
  Lynne Peeples: This was a pet peeve of a lot of scientists I talked to and now pet peeve of mind that they're like, it's kind of the default a lot of places to put that.
• 30:38
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 30:39
  Lynne Peeples: On eyeglasses.
• 30:40
  Lynne Peeples: And you pay
• 30:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: extra for it too?
• 30:42
  Lynne Peeples: Oh gosh, yeah.
• 30:43
  Lynne Peeples: That is not helpful during the day at all.
• 30:46
  Lynne Peeples: Maybe a, glare coating if you're on a computer.
• 30:49
  Lynne Peeples: Mm-hmm.
• 30:49
  Lynne Peeples: But as far as the blue light goes, you want that during the day.
• 30:53
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Interesting.
• 30:56
  Lynne Peeples: This blue light is the color, the wavelength that's telling the body.
• 30:59
  Lynne Peeples: It's daytime.
• 31:00
  Lynne Peeples: It's a strong.
• 31:02
  Lynne Peeples: Color emitted by the sun.
• 31:04
  Lynne Peeples: So we evolved with that, suggesting to our clocks that it's a day at night.
• 31:09
  Lynne Peeples: That's fine.
• 31:10
  Lynne Peeples: 'cause we do want to cut out the blue light at night.
• 31:14
  Lynne Peeples: But if you're wearing those during the day it's not helping.
• 31:18
  Lynne Peeples: You're clock.
• 31:18
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So that's where science gets turned into pseudoscience.
• 31:23
  Lynne Peeples: Yep.
• 31:24
  Lynne Peeples: Yep.
• 31:24
  Lynne Peeples: Exactly.
• 31:25
  Lynne Peeples: And there were just these messages get, like oversimplified and not, people don't understand the nuance.
• 31:31
  Lynne Peeples: It's like day versus night,'cause if I hear it's helpful at night, it's, anyway.
• 31:36
  Lynne Peeples: I didn't know about this before, but energy efficient windows too are made to filter out a lot of the blue light.
• 31:45
  Lynne Peeples: So even if you're sitting in your office and you have a window right there, it's not really, I mean, it's still helping.
• 31:51
  Lynne Peeples: It's still helping a lot.
• 31:52
  Lynne Peeples: It's not filtering it all out
• 31:54
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: request.
• 31:54
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay.
• 31:55
  Lynne Peeples: All these things are just decreasing how much we're getting incrementally.
• 31:59
  Lynne Peeples: So we're already indoors most of the time.
• 32:01
  Lynne Peeples: It's just more reason that we're not getting enough to
• 32:04
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 32:05
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So our environment is already dampening our circadian rhythms.
• 32:08
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Right, exactly.
• 32:09
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So that's why it feels so much worse than midlife for women.
• 32:12
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah,
• 32:13
  Lynne Peeples: yeah, exactly.
• 32:13
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 32:14
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Lynne Peeples: So we have to try extra hard, like we just have to take out all those barriers.
• 32:19
  Lynne Peeples: We gotta put ourselves outside with naked eyes, get some sun for at least, portion of the day, I think.
• 32:25
  Lynne Peeples: Or natural light.
• 32:26
  Lynne Peeples: Yes, exactly.
• 32:27
  Lynne Peeples: In
• 32:27
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Sweden, don't have sun in the Pacific Northwest.
• 32:29
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Oh,
• 32:29
  Lynne Peeples: that's a good point.
• 32:30
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 32:30
  Lynne Peeples: By sun, I mean filtered by clouds.
• 32:33
  Lynne Peeples: The lot of them.
• 32:34
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay.
• 32:34
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 32:34
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Clouds don't block that much blue light.
• 32:36
  Lynne Peeples: Exactly.
• 32:37
  Lynne Peeples: We're still, you still get it out there.
• 32:38
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 32:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay.
• 32:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Absolutely.
• 32:40
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: All right.
• 32:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That's good to know.
• 32:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay, so we've covered the contrast portion of your three Cs.
• 32:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: What comes next?
• 32:47
  Lynne Peeples: Next is constrict, and that is the time restricted eating we were talking about.
• 32:53
  Lynne Peeples: Mm-hmm.
• 32:53
  Lynne Peeples: So again, trying to consolidate the hours that you eat.
• 32:57
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 32:57
  Lynne Peeples: And really thinking about, evolutionarily, we really evolve to eat.
• 33:01
  Lynne Peeples: During the daylight hours.
• 33:03
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 33:03
  Lynne Peeples: And that's the idea of course, about our latitude, daylight changes throughout the year, but again, aiming for maybe 10 hours.
• 33:10
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 33:11
  Lynne Peeples: And then the last one is consistent or consistency and that is trying to, in particular.
• 33:18
  Lynne Peeples: Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, every day of the week, which is difficult if you have a job that starts really early or you're going to school at 7:20 AM so you know, you, it's gonna be impossible for most people to check all these off precisely every day.
• 33:37
  Lynne Peeples: But just doing the best you can and trying to.
• 33:40
  Lynne Peeples: Reduce how much Change there is for you between your like workday schedule and your weekend schedule.
• 33:46
  Lynne Peeples: The more you can do that, the better.
• 33:47
  Lynne Peeples: 'cause that's really jet lag you're doing to your body.
• 33:50
  Lynne Peeples: It's like traveling multiple time zones over a weekend'cause you're like sleeping.
• 33:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: You know?
• 33:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I never thought about it that way, but that is.
• 33:57
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Spot on.
• 33:58
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: the older I get, I the more, it's funny, my dad was always a super early riser because he worked at Boeing and he would wanna beat the traffic because the office he worked at was in Kent, which is so far south of where we all grew up, and he now is just trained, like he automatically wakes up at four 30 and I just always attributed it to his job.
• 34:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But now I will wake up at 5:00 AM regardless of whether my alarm goes off or not, and I just sit there and I think, oh boy.
• 34:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And then I wanna stay up later during, and it's much harder because my body just automatically wakes up.
• 34:34
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So I've been trying some of these things.
• 34:36
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I don't know if you got a chance to listen to my episode with Andrea Moor, Dr.
• 34:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Andrea Moor, who's a sleep specialist, but she talks a lot about these things as well in terms of, what are habits that you can start building and preparing for your sleep so that you're consistent with it.
• 34:54
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I started doing it after I interviewed her, and it made such a difference on the days that I can actually pull it off.
• 35:01
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I wake up the next morning, like able to get out of bed without hitting snooze eight times and I can work out and do everything that I need to in the morning before I start my day.
• 35:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But on the days that I just wanna try and hang out and stay up past like 10:00 PM so I have to go to bed before 10 it's much, much harder to be consistent.
• 35:21
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Are those sleep hygiene things that she was talking about, or, yeah, yeah.
• 35:25
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 35:26
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So just trying to, prepare your body for sleep.
• 35:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 35:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Kind of how you're talking about preparing your environment to optimize what your light looks like throughout different times in the day.
• 35:36
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So for those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest, what do we do in like the dark, dark winter where we don't have a ton of daylight?
• 35:46
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I know you and I have talked about.
• 35:47
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Sleep lamp or not sleep lamps.
• 35:49
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So light lamps.
• 35:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That can potentially be helpful.
• 35:52
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Do you have a recommendation for a certain one?
• 35:55
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Is this something that people should, who live in these areas where there's more dark than light during the winter?
• 36:00
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Is this something we should invest in?
• 36:02
  Lynne Peeples: I found it helpful.
• 36:04
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 36:04
  Lynne Peeples: And there's, studies suggests if particular for people with seasonal affective disorder.
• 36:09
  Lynne Peeples: So they show that this does help note, help my
• 36:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: patients.
• 36:11
  Yeah.
• 36:12
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 36:12
  Lynne Peeples: Used appropriately.
• 36:13
  Lynne Peeples: So I would point people to the Centers for Environmental Therapeutics.
• 36:19
  Lynne Peeples: CET has a website in which they have some scientists, backed products that have been tested.
• 36:27
  Lynne Peeples: So I would go there to look for particular sun lamps.
• 36:30
  Lynne Peeples: Okay.
• 36:30
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, I mean there is a lot out there.
• 36:32
  Lynne Peeples: It's sort of the wild west and there's not a lot of regulation on any of the circadian lighting stuff, which, hopefully we'll get there through scientists trying to reign that in and get some more hard data and then hopefully, eventually standards around that.
• 36:46
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 36:48
  Lynne Peeples: But yeah, I think yeah, when the sun doesn't rise until, yeah, almost eight o'clock.
• 36:52
  Lynne Peeples: And then if we end up on permanent daylight saving time ever.
• 36:55
  Lynne Peeples: Ooh, we're not gonna see the sun till like nine, almost nine o'clock in Seattle for weeks
• 37:00
  in winter.
• 37:02
  Lynne Peeples: Let's hope
• 37:02
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: that doesn't happen.
• 37:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That's gonna be rough.
• 37:05
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's already rough.
• 37:06
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I'm so glad we're on the other side and it's now turning into longer days.
• 37:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But we have the opposite problem during the summer too, right?
• 37:14
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's like bright until like 9:30 PM sometimes.
• 37:18
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And.
• 37:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I remember when Rohan was little and we were trying to get him to go to sleep.
• 37:23
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: All the, we had to buy room darkening shades.
• 37:26
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: There was no way that my child was gonna fall asleep before.
• 37:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Nine o'clock if I didn't have those up.
• 37:32
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And we were trying to put'em to bed at like seven 30, so it was not going well.
• 37:37
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 37:38
  Lynne Peeples: The blackout shades are critical.
• 37:41
  Lynne Peeples: And I have some in my bedroom, but there's still so much light that leaks around.
• 37:45
  Lynne Peeples: Yeah.
• 37:45
  Lynne Peeples: And I'm like now, right now, like plastic bags, taped up the top trying to block that light because.
• 37:52
  Lynne Peeples: Also, as I've gotten older, I am more sensitive to all these, yeah.
• 37:57
  Lynne Peeples: Sleep disruptors, including
• 37:59
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: lights sneaking in.
• 38:00
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So it's our dampen circadian rhythms and midlife lift.
• 38:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Mm-hmm.
• 38:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Mm-hmm.
• 38:04
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Well, the things to look forward to.
• 38:07
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I just wanna say thank you so much for joining me this morning and taking the time to talk about your book.
• 38:14
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: For all of my listeners out there who have not yet gotten a chance to listen to or read Lynne's book, there is an audio book too I found online.
• 38:22
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So I half listened to it and I have read it but it's called The Inner Clock.
• 38:28
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Living in sync with our circadian rhythms.
• 38:30
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I will link your website as well as where you can purchase the book online.
• 38:35
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I just to review one more time in terms of trying to get your circadian rhythms in order it.
• 38:43
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: It's important to maybe consider what your chronotype may be so you can tailor some of that.
• 38:48
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And then the three things we want to do are contrast, which means make sure that we're getting our light and dark at the right times.
• 38:54
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Constrict when we are consuming our calories, geared towards earlier in the day.
• 38:59
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And then number three, try and be as consistent with our habits as possible.
• 39:03
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: And I think that's a struggle for everybody.
• 39:05
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: If you haven't read Atomic Habits.
• 39:07
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: That is a great stepping stone into getting there.
• 39:11
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: But I generally tell my patients, 80 20 is a good rule for consistency.
• 39:16
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: If you can do it 80% of the time, you're making a huge difference in your life.
• 39:19
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So thank you so much, Lynne.
• 39:21
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I appreciate it.
• 39:22
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: I'm excited for our dinner date that we planned later and to come see you at your book signings.
• 39:29
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: For any of you who are local.
• 39:31
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Actually you're doing these kind of all over the place, but if you go to Lynne's website, you, do you have a section for events where people can come meet you and talk about it?
• 39:38
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Next
• 39:38
  do, yes.
• 39:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yep.
• 39:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Okay.
• 39:39
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Yep.
• 39:40
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: All wonderful.
• 39:41
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: So I will make sure all of that is linked.
• 39:44
  Dr. Komal Patil-Sisodia: Thanks again, Lynne.
• 39:45
  Lynne Peeples: Thank you Komal.