5 ms·

How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night

169 points by jmonegro 17y ago

ivanyv 17y ago
Hey, that can come in handy! I want to get up a bit earlier without using an alarm, so I hope it works!
- _pi 17y ago
  In my experience you'll wake several times in the night in bursts of energy (as a defense mechanism telling you to get food), they'll subside if you lay there for about 10 minutes and you'll cruise right back to sleep just from your body trying to conserve energy.
  - HalcyonMuse 17y ago
    Very handy to know! Thank you.
figital 17y ago
I accidentally noticed this a few years ago and have been waking up refreshed ever since (prior to this I was consistently groggy in the morning my whole life). I attempt to eat a large breakfast, a normal sized lunch, and then a light healthy snack in the evening if I must. Probably not for everyone but it's worked for me.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  Ah, interesting. So for you, the fact that you where eating large dinners and not much of a breakfast was throwing your sleep out of whack before?
  - figital 17y ago
    Not really, just the fact that I was eating later in the day. The hunch is that the energy being used to digest food while sleeping is now being used to re-energize my brain. I rarely need an alarm clock anymore.
greengirl512 17y ago
Nice...I've been trying to wake up earlier and get on the same sleep schedule as hubby (I'm a night owl, he's a morning person, constant source of relationship tension). Maybe this will work...although since I don't work well when I'm famished, I'll have to wait until I have a free day to try it.
billswift 17y ago
I am planning to change my sleeping schedule tonight as it happens. I have just enough time to try this and see if it helps. I have changed my schedule before, so I will have past experience to compare it to. I will reply to myself tomorrow morning to let you know if it seems to help or not.
- jmonegro 17y ago
  Don't forget!
- JeremyChase 17y ago
  Bill I am going to give it a try too; but we won't know if it has worked for 2 days. Tomorrow(Tuesday EST) you'll wake up and eat, and that is the trigger to alter your sleep schedule. If you wake up naturally the following day (Wednesday EST) you'll know it worked.
- _pi 17y ago
  Be careful about this, I have personally had a (as in one) horrid experience, YMMV. (I've done this 3 times, and yes it works however I fasted for a full 16-17 hours.) Back story: I irresponsibly slept for 2-3 weeks. Racking up a sleep debt of sometimes 4 hours per night. So by the time that I decided to reset my schedule I was about 24 hours+ in sleep debt. Needless to say I used this exact method, I didn't eat for 16 hours before, and I had to get up a 7 so I stopped eating around 3PM. This was a bad idea, I didn't have a very filling lunch, and after a while if you've done this before you note that not eating makes you very very very sleepy. I left work around 5:15. I fell asleep around 5:30, unfortunately I was still driving at the time. The car veered into the oncomming lane (it was empty) and went up the curb, on which was a small hill. I was still asleep when this happened, and then the car went up so far it couldn't sustain, and it flipped back into my lane (this happened at 40-50 MPH). Needless to say I awoke scared shitless as I was plummeting towards the ground and my airbags were deploying. I escaped the accident with just some cuts on my hand from the shattered glass from the side windows. My car was totaled. The officer who came on site gave me a 200$ ticket. My father took me to the hospital, where I was given a CAT scan and everything checked out fine. However I had no way of getting to work. The car wasn't worth much it was an 11 year old Ford Escort Coup. Blue book value was around $4,000. The moral of the story is, be thankful for what you have, sleep responsibly and take care of yourself. The accident was last Monday.
sonofjanoh 17y ago
If I have a full meal I barely can stay awake. I know that the body switches into a different mode to process the meal and extract the proteins etc and for this it drains me of other energy like focusing. It is interesting how my productivity increases with hunger. That's why lions sleep 20 hours a day. After a massive meal they can barely do anything but digest. So I think mammals' first thing of the day is to go out and find food. Once food found and eaten there's no point to stay awake. I really think that a meal concludes the day not starts it in the animal world. Although providing the body with just enough to keep it fueled and in a way that it won't have to put you to sleep to extract the proteins we can make ourselves do more and take hunger & sleeping off our minds during the day. To stay fresh just don't starve or over-eat yourselves. It works for me.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  It can also depend on what you eat from what I hear. Some foods can wreak more havoc on blood sugar levels than others.
  - sonofjanoh 17y ago
    True. Some types of food will take a lot of work from the digestive system to be broken down before the body can use them as a source of energy. That's why you put highly refined petrol into a car and not raw oil. It's choosing a musli bar over a burger...well almost.
    - speek 17y ago
      Actually... a burger (without the bun, ideally with lots of veggies) will trigger a much less jagged insulin response than a musli bar will. Fats and proteins tend to raise the blood sugar in a much more sustainable fashion... thus allowing the eater to not feel sleepy after a meal.
      - HalcyonMuse 17y ago
        "A more sustainable fashion" relative to what? Carbohydrates, I'm guessing?
KClough 17y ago
Melatonin is natural and works wonders, and you can eat! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin
- indiejade 17y ago
  The nice thing about melatonin is that it's not addictive. About three days, and the body finds its pattern. As the article mentioned, fasting during the correct times would work but that + a low dosage of melatonin 30 minutes before the desired bedtime would probably work even better.
  - HalcyonMuse 17y ago
    Something important to note is that melatonin is not going to force you to sleep. You're not going to fall asleep staring at a computer screen if you take a dose of melatonin. It will make you sufficiently tired to sleep if you lie down and close your eyes for a bit, but it's not going to overcome the awareness-brainhack that is staring at bright light.
dbz 17y ago
Seeing as I'm on a plane every few years I'll defiantly try this out. On a side note, did anyone else find this amusing? Here's a quick summary of Saper's research findings: "For a small mammal, finding food on a daily basis is a critical mission. Even a few days of starvation, a common threat in natural environments, may result in death," the study said. I would never have guessed!
codyrobbins 17y ago
For everyone that's intent on doing this, I've tried it before and it didn't work. I fly quite often between Honolulu and the East Coast to see family, and there's a six hour time difference. The jetlag is pretty terrible. Someone told me about this research and I tried it out very excited to finally have a way to avoid the jetlag, but it absolutely didn't work — at least, for me. Furthermore, not eating for 16 hours is not very enjoyable — arguably, it was less enjoyable than a couple days of jetlag.
alexgartrell 17y ago
Why do I read Hacker News? Because the week I'm to fly from California to Ohio, an article about hacking jet lag is on the front page. Awesome
- PhillipJFry 17y ago
  I dunno if fasting for 12+ hours is worth it for a three hour time difference!
  - Evgeny 17y ago
    Fasting is considered to have some health benefits by many, so maybe you can kill two birds with one stone here. Though I guess 12 hour fasting would be too short to benefit.
- joshu 17y ago
  California to Ohio isn't jetlag. It's waking up a bit earlier than usual.
Radix 17y ago
I never eat a breakfast. I usually eat my first meal after 12 closer to 2. I am now convinced I need to set up an easy breakfast the night before. Cause this night owl stuff just isn't working anymore.
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  Sounds familiar. I am naturally something of a night owl. I used to really dislike eating breakfast. I just didn't feel hungry in the morning and it seemed like too much hassle to prepare something. But now that I have actually started to have breakfast as part of my morning routine (I really had to force myself to begin with) I find that my energy levels during the morning are much improved and so is my concentration. I'd recommend you try something that you don't have to chew too much to begin with. Like oat meal (lots of complex carbohydrates which is good for me because I do weight training). I buy boxes of compressed bricks of oats that come apart once soaked in milk for a while. two or three bricks in a bowl and I usually add a little protein powder (weight training again) and maybe a little extra sweetener (usually the protein powder is enough). Quick to eat and I'm not really big on chewy/crunchy stuff right after I get up, too much effort. :)
jacquesm 17y ago
I've flown back and forth Between Toronto and Amsterdam on a two week schedule for over two years. My take away lesson is this: The body can adapt fairly easily to a longer day but it hates shortening days (and that's my body, so YMMV). My trick to deal with jet-lag was very simple. Extend your day. Make sure you have plenty of low energy things to do but stay awake on the day that you travel. Going 'west' makes your day 6 hours longer, going 'east' then makes your day 18 hours longer. 18 is pushing it a bit so I usually would go to bed around 10 in the evening and sleep for 9 hours instead of going to bed at 12 and sleeping for 7. This simple trick seemed to work for me and I never suffered from jet lag after I started doing it, before it was absolute hell. It would take me roughly until the time that I was ready to leave again to acclimatize.
rms 17y ago
Or, just do it with a natural nutritional supplement available OTC in the USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin
jmonegro 17y ago
Well, I just tried it. Didn't it since 4pm yesterday, and woke up at around 6:50 with the help of an alarm (which usually don't work). I just had breakfast, and will not eat after 4pm today either, and see when I fall asleep/wake up without an alarm this time.
ALee 17y ago
This was posted on HN before. I think another article cited that it was 10-16 hours beforehand. The other 3 tips were to focus on exposure to sunlight, routinizing the whole sleeping/waking process, and exercising during the day.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

169 points by jmonegro 17y ago

ivanyv 17y ago

Hey, that can come in handy! I want to get up a bit earlier without using an alarm, so I hope it works!

_pi 17y ago
In my experience you'll wake several times in the night in bursts of energy (as a defense mechanism telling you to get food), they'll subside if you lay there for about 10 minutes and you'll cruise right back to sleep just from your body trying to conserve energy.
- HalcyonMuse 17y ago
  Very handy to know! Thank you.

figital 17y ago

I accidentally noticed this a few years ago and have been waking up refreshed ever since (prior to this I was consistently groggy in the morning my whole life). I attempt to eat a large breakfast, a normal sized lunch, and then a light healthy snack in the evening if I must. Probably not for everyone but it's worked for me.

TrevorJ 17y ago
Ah, interesting. So for you, the fact that you where eating large dinners and not much of a breakfast was throwing your sleep out of whack before?
- figital 17y ago
  Not really, just the fact that I was eating later in the day. The hunch is that the energy being used to digest food while sleeping is now being used to re-energize my brain. I rarely need an alarm clock anymore.

greengirl512 17y ago

Nice...I've been trying to wake up earlier and get on the same sleep schedule as hubby (I'm a night owl, he's a morning person, constant source of relationship tension). Maybe this will work...although since I don't work well when I'm famished, I'll have to wait until I have a free day to try it.

billswift 17y ago

I am planning to change my sleeping schedule tonight as it happens. I have just enough time to try this and see if it helps. I have changed my schedule before, so I will have past experience to compare it to. I will reply to myself tomorrow morning to let you know if it seems to help or not.

jmonegro 17y ago
Don't forget!
JeremyChase 17y ago
Bill I am going to give it a try too; but we won't know if it has worked for 2 days. Tomorrow(Tuesday EST) you'll wake up and eat, and that is the trigger to alter your sleep schedule. If you wake up naturally the following day (Wednesday EST) you'll know it worked.
_pi 17y ago
Be careful about this, I have personally had a (as in one) horrid experience, YMMV. (I've done this 3 times, and yes it works however I fasted for a full 16-17 hours.) Back story: I irresponsibly slept for 2-3 weeks. Racking up a sleep debt of sometimes 4 hours per night. So by the time that I decided to reset my schedule I was about 24 hours+ in sleep debt. Needless to say I used this exact method, I didn't eat for 16 hours before, and I had to get up a 7 so I stopped eating around 3PM. This was a bad idea, I didn't have a very filling lunch, and after a while if you've done this before you note that not eating makes you very very very sleepy. I left work around 5:15. I fell asleep around 5:30, unfortunately I was still driving at the time. The car veered into the oncomming lane (it was empty) and went up the curb, on which was a small hill. I was still asleep when this happened, and then the car went up so far it couldn't sustain, and it flipped back into my lane (this happened at 40-50 MPH). Needless to say I awoke scared shitless as I was plummeting towards the ground and my airbags were deploying. I escaped the accident with just some cuts on my hand from the shattered glass from the side windows. My car was totaled. The officer who came on site gave me a 200$ ticket. My father took me to the hospital, where I was given a CAT scan and everything checked out fine. However I had no way of getting to work. The car wasn't worth much it was an 11 year old Ford Escort Coup. Blue book value was around $4,000. The moral of the story is, be thankful for what you have, sleep responsibly and take care of yourself. The accident was last Monday.

sonofjanoh 17y ago

If I have a full meal I barely can stay awake. I know that the body switches into a different mode to process the meal and extract the proteins etc and for this it drains me of other energy like focusing. It is interesting how my productivity increases with hunger. That's why lions sleep 20 hours a day. After a massive meal they can barely do anything but digest. So I think mammals' first thing of the day is to go out and find food. Once food found and eaten there's no point to stay awake. I really think that a meal concludes the day not starts it in the animal world. Although providing the body with just enough to keep it fueled and in a way that it won't have to put you to sleep to extract the proteins we can make ourselves do more and take hunger & sleeping off our minds during the day. To stay fresh just don't starve or over-eat yourselves. It works for me.

TrevorJ 17y ago
It can also depend on what you eat from what I hear. Some foods can wreak more havoc on blood sugar levels than others.
- sonofjanoh 17y ago
  True. Some types of food will take a lot of work from the digestive system to be broken down before the body can use them as a source of energy. That's why you put highly refined petrol into a car and not raw oil. It's choosing a musli bar over a burger...well almost.
  - speek 17y ago
    Actually... a burger (without the bun, ideally with lots of veggies) will trigger a much less jagged insulin response than a musli bar will. Fats and proteins tend to raise the blood sugar in a much more sustainable fashion... thus allowing the eater to not feel sleepy after a meal.
    - HalcyonMuse 17y ago
      "A more sustainable fashion" relative to what? Carbohydrates, I'm guessing?

KClough 17y ago

Melatonin is natural and works wonders, and you can eat! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin

indiejade 17y ago
The nice thing about melatonin is that it's not addictive. About three days, and the body finds its pattern. As the article mentioned, fasting during the correct times would work but that + a low dosage of melatonin 30 minutes before the desired bedtime would probably work even better.
- HalcyonMuse 17y ago
  Something important to note is that melatonin is not going to force you to sleep. You're not going to fall asleep staring at a computer screen if you take a dose of melatonin. It will make you sufficiently tired to sleep if you lie down and close your eyes for a bit, but it's not going to overcome the awareness-brainhack that is staring at bright light.

dbz 17y ago

Seeing as I'm on a plane every few years I'll defiantly try this out. On a side note, did anyone else find this amusing? Here's a quick summary of Saper's research findings: "For a small mammal, finding food on a daily basis is a critical mission. Even a few days of starvation, a common threat in natural environments, may result in death," the study said. I would never have guessed!

codyrobbins 17y ago

For everyone that's intent on doing this, I've tried it before and it didn't work. I fly quite often between Honolulu and the East Coast to see family, and there's a six hour time difference. The jetlag is pretty terrible. Someone told me about this research and I tried it out very excited to finally have a way to avoid the jetlag, but it absolutely didn't work — at least, for me. Furthermore, not eating for 16 hours is not very enjoyable — arguably, it was less enjoyable than a couple days of jetlag.

alexgartrell 17y ago

Why do I read Hacker News? Because the week I'm to fly from California to Ohio, an article about hacking jet lag is on the front page. Awesome

PhillipJFry 17y ago
I dunno if fasting for 12+ hours is worth it for a three hour time difference!
- Evgeny 17y ago
  Fasting is considered to have some health benefits by many, so maybe you can kill two birds with one stone here. Though I guess 12 hour fasting would be too short to benefit.
joshu 17y ago
California to Ohio isn't jetlag. It's waking up a bit earlier than usual.

Radix 17y ago

I never eat a breakfast. I usually eat my first meal after 12 closer to 2. I am now convinced I need to set up an easy breakfast the night before. Cause this night owl stuff just isn't working anymore.

jonny_noog 17y ago
Sounds familiar. I am naturally something of a night owl. I used to really dislike eating breakfast. I just didn't feel hungry in the morning and it seemed like too much hassle to prepare something. But now that I have actually started to have breakfast as part of my morning routine (I really had to force myself to begin with) I find that my energy levels during the morning are much improved and so is my concentration. I'd recommend you try something that you don't have to chew too much to begin with. Like oat meal (lots of complex carbohydrates which is good for me because I do weight training). I buy boxes of compressed bricks of oats that come apart once soaked in milk for a while. two or three bricks in a bowl and I usually add a little protein powder (weight training again) and maybe a little extra sweetener (usually the protein powder is enough). Quick to eat and I'm not really big on chewy/crunchy stuff right after I get up, too much effort. :)

jacquesm 17y ago

I've flown back and forth Between Toronto and Amsterdam on a two week schedule for over two years. My take away lesson is this: The body can adapt fairly easily to a longer day but it hates shortening days (and that's my body, so YMMV). My trick to deal with jet-lag was very simple. Extend your day. Make sure you have plenty of low energy things to do but stay awake on the day that you travel. Going 'west' makes your day 6 hours longer, going 'east' then makes your day 18 hours longer. 18 is pushing it a bit so I usually would go to bed around 10 in the evening and sleep for 9 hours instead of going to bed at 12 and sleeping for 7. This simple trick seemed to work for me and I never suffered from jet lag after I started doing it, before it was absolute hell. It would take me roughly until the time that I was ready to leave again to acclimatize.

rms 17y ago

Or, just do it with a natural nutritional supplement available OTC in the USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin

jmonegro 17y ago

Well, I just tried it. Didn't it since 4pm yesterday, and woke up at around 6:50 with the help of an alarm (which usually don't work). I just had breakfast, and will not eat after 4pm today either, and see when I fall asleep/wake up without an alarm this time.

ALee 17y ago

This was posted on HN before. I think another article cited that it was 10-16 hours beforehand. The other 3 tips were to focus on exposure to sunlight, routinizing the whole sleeping/waking process, and exercising during the day.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]