Reset Your Sleep Cycle with a 16-Hour Fast
Rebooting your sleep cycle? Totally possible, according to Harvard researcher Clifford Saper:
Harvard researcher Clifford Saper explains that one’s body has more than just a single clock dictating some magical eight-hour sleep period. Sleep needs are regulated in part by exposure to light, but also by food intake. By fasting for 16 hours before your breakfast in a new time zone or on a new sleep/wake schedule, or perhaps after some really rough sleep nights, one can “override” the body’s other sleep clocks that have a really aggravating way of demanding obedience. The Wise Bread blog suggests 12 hours might be a decent compromise if you can’t hold off for 16 hours, though Saper seems to suggest 16 is the magic number.
Link and video via lifehacker.com.
This sounds really nifty but I couldn’t figure out from this if the sleep cycle would reset immediately. Would you have to go to sleep right after that fast-breaking meal for that 8 hour sleep?
I can vouch for that. Doing it for a few years now on my flights between the west coast and europe, after reading the original research paper of circadian cycles in mice. Works great. Doesn’t really matter what you do with your sleep in between, as long as you eat at the time you want to wake up the next day.
@emonk
Does it work better with a full meal, or is a snack sufficient?