I'm alright these days, but when I was living up in the high arctic, it was a mess. We all have internal clocks that tick away, but these need environmental cues to stay on track. The day is 24 hours but your internal clock is perhaps 24.5 hours or 23 hours and the longer you go without an environmental cue that tells you "it's morning" or something similar, the more offset your internal clock will be - unless it goes on so far it starts catching up again.
All that quickly happens when you live up in the high arctic where it's usually light 24 hours a day or dark 24 hours a day. Your internal clock is completely confused for a while, then it starts to catch up again, then it gets messed up again. It could probably also happen if you seclude yourself inside an apartment.
Environmental cues means light. When you wake up, there's supposed to be light and if you have a hard time getting up in the morning, you could try looking at bright light for a few seconds. It should get those hormones working and make your body realize it's morning and time to get up. Similarly, you should obviously stay away from bright light if you wanna sleep. We are not very light sensitive which makes it take a little effort to tune your internal clock by artificial light, so soft reading light is probably okay, but keep the level down and don't look in the bulb if you wanna sleep.
|