How to Naturally Reset your Sleep Cycle in one Night

Scientists have long known that our circadian rhythm is regulated by our exposure to light. Now

they have found a second "food clock" that takes over when we are hungry. This mechanism probably evolved to make sure starving mammals don't go to sleep when they should be foraging for food.

Not eating for 12-16 hours can help people quickly reset their sleep-wake cycle, according to a study from the Harvard Medical School. This discovery can drastically improve a person's ability to cope with jet lag or adjust to working late shifts.

The lead researcher Clifford Saper explains: "The neat thing about this second clock is that it can override the main clock...and you should just flip into that new time zone in one day."

It usually takes people a week to fully adjust to a new time zone or sleeping schedule. To think that this new "food clock" hack can help you change your internal clock in one day is mind boggling.

How Do You Use This Trick? It's pretty simple, just stop eating during the 12-16 hour period before you want to be awake. Once you start eating again, your internal clock will be reset as though it is the start of a new day. Your body will consider the time you break your fast as your new "morning."

Here's an example, if you want to start waking up at 2:00 am, you should start fasting between 10:00 am or 2:00 pm the previous day, and don't break your fast until you wake up at 2:00 am. Make sure you eat a nice healthy meal to jumpstart your system.


Now for the science part. How does this actually work?

It has to do with survival. Clifford Saper explains: 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. "Hence, it is adaptive for animals to have a secondary "master clock" that can allow the animal to switch its behavioral patterns rapidly after a period of starvation to maximize the opportunity of finding food sources at the same time on following days." The shift is a survival mechanism in small mammals that forces them to change their sleeping patterns, Fuller suggests. One starvation cycle is enough to override the traditional light-based circadian clock, the study suggests.

"This new timepiece enables animals to switch their sleep and wake schedules in order to maximize
their opportunity of finding food. A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," says Saper. "So, in this case, simply avoiding any food on the plane, and then eating as soon as you land, should help you to adjust — and avoid some of the uncomfortable feelings of jet lag."

(quoting study published in the May 22 issue of Science).

How to avoid jet lag

Scientists have long known that our circadian rhythm is regulated by our exposure to light. Now

they have found a second "food clock" that takes over when we are hungry. This mechanism probably evolved to make sure starving mammals don't go to sleep when they should be foraging for food.

Not eating for 12-16 hours can help people quickly reset their sleep-wake cycle, according to a study from the Harvard Medical School. This discovery can drastically improve a person's ability to cope with jet lag or adjust to working late shifts.

The lead researcher Clifford Saper explains: "The neat thing about this second clock is that it can override the main clock...and you should just flip into that new time zone in one day."

It usually takes people a week to fully adjust to a new time zone or sleeping schedule. To think that this new "food clock" hack can help you change your internal clock in one day is mind boggling.

How Do You Use This Trick? It's pretty simple, just stop eating during the 12-16 hour period before you want to be awake. Once you start eating again, your internal clock will be reset as though it is the start of a new day. Your body will consider the time you break your fast as your new "morning."

Here's an example, if you want to start waking up at 2:00 am, you should start fasting between 10:00 am or 2:00 pm the previous day, and don't break your fast until you wake up at 2:00 am. Make sure you eat a nice healthy meal to jumpstart your system.


Now for the science part. How does this actually work?

It has to do with survival. Clifford Saper explains: 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. "Hence, it is adaptive for animals to have a secondary "master clock" that can allow the animal to switch its behavioral patterns rapidly after a period of starvation to maximize the opportunity of finding food sources at the same time on following days." The shift is a survival mechanism in small mammals that forces them to change their sleeping patterns, Fuller suggests. One starvation cycle is enough to override the traditional light-based circadian clock, the study suggests.

"This new timepiece enables animals to switch their sleep and wake schedules in order to maximize

their opportunity of finding food. A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," says Saper. "So, in this case, simply avoiding any food on the plane, and then eating as soon as you land, should help you to adjust — and avoid some of the uncomfortable feelings of jet lag."

(quoting study published in the May 22 issue of Science).

How to control your aging process

Scientists have found a biological command center for the ageing process in a lump of brain the size of a nut.

The US team identified the mechanism in the hypothalamus. It sits deep inside the brain. They found that they could tweak it to shorten or lengthen the lives of animals like mice.

After multiple experiments, the researchers found they could extend the lives of mice by one fifth, without the animals suffering from the common muscle weakness, bone loss, or memory problems.

The work raises the tantalizing prospect of drugs that could slow down natural ageing to prolong life
in humans, but more importantly it these new drugs could prevent age-related diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer's.

Dongsheng Cai at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York told the Guardian. "We're very excited about this. It supports the idea that ageing is more than a passive deterioration of different tissues. It is under control, and can be manipulated,"

The scientists said that they found that a chemical called NF-kB became more active in the hypothalamus of mice as they got older. When the researchers blocked the substance, mice lived up to 1,100 days, compared with 600 to 1000 days for normal healthy mice. When they boosted NF-kB in mice, they all died within 900 days. Without the NF-KB the mice had more muscle and bone, were better at learning, and had healthier skin than the controls.

Further work showed that NF-kB lowered levels of a hormone called GnRH, which is better known for the central role it plays in fertility and the development of sperm and eggs. When the scientists gave old mice daily jabs of GnRH, they found this too extended the animals' lives, and even caused fresh neurons to grow in their brains.

"The idea that ageing can be globally influenced by hormones produced in the brain is of great interest to scientists," Yankner told the Guardian. "Given the many effects of these hormones, however, their clinical use in diseases of ageing, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's and heart disease, will need to be carefully studied," he said.

The reason you didn't major in science or math

In a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers Ralph

Stinebrickner of Berea College and Todd R. Stinebrickner of the University of Western Ontario say that college students are fleeing from math, physics, chemistry and the like after dipping into some classes.

The researchers surveyed 655 students entering Berea College. Berea college is a private liberal arts college in Kentucky. During the falls of 2000 and 2001. The students were asked about their beliefs pertaining to majors 12 times during each year they were in school, the first time prior to starting college. The questions covered a many topics, including their certainty of graduating with a particular major, their anticipated grade point average and the amount of work they expected to do each day.

The researchers found that while math and science majors drew the most interest initially, very few ever finished with a degree. More students dropped out of the math and science majors, and fewer students switched into them than any other major at the college.

The students didn’t drop because of an unexpected amount of work. In fact, students who expressed interest initially anticipated more work than other majors.

The students switched out because they were dissatisfied with their grades. Todd R. Stinebrickner, one of the paper’s authors said, “What they didn’t expect is that even if they worked hard, they still wouldn't do well.”

Can fear be cured? What the scientific studies show

Here’s the short version of what happens: fear. The most primal, and elemental, of all our emotions; our “fight or flight” instinct, honed over tens of thousands of years as hunter-gatherers. It alerts us to immediate dangers. It creates memories that allow us to remember dangerous things. It reminds us of the consequences of doing something foolhardy. It is, as Gavin de Becker describes in his book The Gift of Fear, “a brilliant internal guardian that warns you of hazards and guides you through risky situations”.

So it stands to reason that scientists are determined to fiddle with it. The problem, as they see it, is an overabundance of fear in Western society. An estimated 3.6 per cent of the UK – around 2.2million people – suffer from anxiety disorders, a four-fold increase in four years. In America, it’s 18 per cent, or 57million people. These can range from common trepidations, such as heights or enclosed spaces, to severe cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Either way, these kinds of fear can prevent any meaningful life. And, with traditional remedies, such as psychotherapy or anti-anxiety drugs like Valium, enjoying poor success rates, scientists are looking for new ways to “cure” it.

“If you’re, say, frightened of heights,” says Prof Nutt, “then current exposure therapy means taking you

up a tall building – or via virtual reality – and repeating it until the fear subsides. The new drugs not only speed this process up, but make it more permanent. So people can overwrite their fear memories more quickly, replacing a bad experience with a different version that doesn’t ruin their lives.”

Another study by Israeli scientists has found that patients injected with a high dose of cortisol immediately after a traumatic experience suffer far less lasting psychological damage – suggesting it should form part of emergency treatment after, say, a car crash. Another study of UK dentists found that simple acupuncture successfully “cured” odontophobia (extreme fear of dentists). And, earlier this year, researchers at the Lieber Institute in Baltimore announced that low doses of psilocybin – the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms – had been found to “turn off” conditioned fear in mice. The hope is this might lead to another potential cure for human PTSD.