Optimize Light & Sleep For Healthy Circadian Rhythms

Jason Prall

Thanks. I love that you threw in that I’m your neighbor as a qualification here. This is. I feel good about that.

Heather Sandison, ND

Well, I feel so lucky. We have facilities and brick-and-mortar places right around the corner from each other. I had the privilege of checking yours out recently, you’ve been to mine. I think it’s just having that camaraderie and that collegiality that, so much is. I think we’ve lost ourselves in the digital age where everything’s on Zoom. I’ve met you in person, which I can’t say about everyone at the summit. There’s a different level of connection, and maybe we can even dive into it as we talk about longevity. We even start there, by talking about the value of connection.

Jason Prall

I love this, and I think we just wandered in. This is unexpected, but it’s so fitting to what I think we’re talking about in terms of brain health and longevity. It is the number one factor, I believe, and research has implicated this connection and feeling connected—feeling connected to others, to something greater than oneself, to pets, to the earth. There’s just this idea of connection and this feeling of connection.  It’s an embodied recognition of connection. That is unbelievable for brain health. It’s unbelievable for our mental faculties to be able to maintain our memory, to be able to maintain our sanity, to not get depressed, and to not get anxious.  There’s this something so inherent about the connection that when we can establish it, of course, when we’re young and supercritical in the developmental process, and then be able to maintain that and have that as we get older, it’s unbelievably critical. You said it when I moved down to this North County, San Diego, an area where we’re at. I would get asked a lot, like, Hey, I’m looking for a practitioner or a neurologist or a chiropractor or such and such. I’m like, I’m sorry, I know about 50 people online around the world to help you, but I don’t know anybody here. That always disappointed me. That’s something. Just now, establishing a brick-and-mortar presence outside of my online presence in the community has created this opportunity to build this web of connections again. It feels so good. I can just speak for my personal experience here to be able to have this network to both rely on and also to support, because that’s the other part of the connection, not only to receive the support but also to be able to give support. When we’re able to offer support, and that can look like a lot of different things, being able to offer that support is nourishing to us.  There’s so much to be gained from that. 

When we did the Human Longevity Project and went to, Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy, and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and Okinawa, the longevity regions of those places weren’t necessarily everywhere.  Sardinia is a big island.  We were in the city of Cagliari, where the airplanes landed. We had to go up into the mountainous regions, into these little villages. That’s where you find the heart of the community. It was so important for their survival. It became a part of the way that they lived, and in that way, it supported the idea of being healthy as they aged. It’s such an important thing. You said that as we have become more self-reliant, as the tools that we have at our fingertips to be able to be self-sufficient are there, we’ve forgotten that it’s still a necessity, even though we can survive on our own, more or less.

It’s not the optimal way to thrive. It’s just to remember that there’s something beyond this idea of using technology and connecting through online media that, I think, benefits us as we get older, even in elderly care facilities. I mean, to have people with whom you can establish friendships. I remember when my grandmother went to an elderly care facility; it wasn’t the greatest, but there was an aspect where she was moving into the dorms again.  It was like the coolest thing to watch because it was just her and my grandfather. After he passed, she was lonely. Now she has friends, stories, and all these things. I was just like, It’s the coolest thing to watch.

Heather Sandison, ND

People are checking up on you. Yes. I want to brag for you for a minute that you were out learning from centenarians in the blue zones before it—back before it was cool, but like before, it was a Netflix special. You had traveled to these blue zones, including, Loma Linda, which is just here in Southern California, and it’s the Seventh-day Adventist community. It is a community you mentioned, and we alluded to the digital world being something that makes us isolate a bit more and not connect in person, but aging itself, losing your confidence, driving, potentially losing your driver’s license, having it take more effort or energy to get out to the card game, feeling tired in the evenings, or not as confident going out after dark. Those kinds of things can make it easier to isolate. I think both of us are sending messages like, Make the effort, go out, make those your friends wherever you are, and make sure that you’re making those connections.

Jason Prall

Yes. one of the things I see, too, as people get older, and I’ve seen it many times. I’m sure it’s not the case for everyone, but it’s such a pattern that I recognize, which is that there’s this idea that I don’t want to be a burden. Once people get into their 70s, 80s, 90s, or maybe even beyond, there’s the idea that I’m a burden on my family and that I’m a burden on other people because they need help. That mentality creates, again, more of that cocooning where it’s like you’re hiding away in this cave, and that is deleterious. The ironic part is that if you want to think about it in terms of being a burden, then you become more of a burden. The way to not be burdened and to be more self-sufficient is to ask for help. It’s ironic. To be able to have that support and to feel safe in that support will create less of a neediness as you age. But as we age, we all need support, and we’re going to need support at some point. I just want to point out that if you feel that way, then it’s like, How do we shift that? It may take some work. Some family members may see you as a burden. That’s that’s that’s that’s rough. That’s on them to fix for you. But wherever we can go to be able to find community, to find support, to feel connected, that’s going to ultimately, benefit us in the long run.

Heather Sandison, ND

Hugely well, I know that we have an agenda for what we do want to talk about in terms of circadian rhythm and light and sleep patterns, and, creating a community with people who are on the same patterns and rhythms as you is also important. talks through light exposure. We think about supplements, nutrients, foods, and exercise all the time, but light and sleep make a difference, and certainly how light affects sleep. These have massive impacts when it comes to brain health. Can you talk?

Jason Prall

Yes, it works totally, and this is an area on circadian rhythms, circadian biology, and chronobiology, as it might be termed in the research and literature. But it got popular in the biohacker community. That’s great because it brought it to light a little bit. But I think this is such an important aspect of just fundamental human living that it doesn’t have to get into biohacker territory to get there. The idea that light is the fundamental source of nourishment for the entire planet is a key concept that we must not forget. It plays such an important part in our biology and our internal biology that it’s ancient goes into every organism, and has an aspect that is related to the life cycle. Whether it’s plants, insects, fungi—you name it—does it matter? 

Everything is guided by the light. It’s one of those aspects that we’ve been taught to fear because of skin cancer and these other things, and that’s a whole other mess that we would have to tackle. But we must go into the light. We get light exposure on our skin. There are a ton of important factors that are at work. When we get light exposure to the skin, our skin is designed, so to speak. It is adapted to absorb light, reflect light, and transform light into various things.  Of course, we know about vitamin D, but it goes so much beyond that.

 The other thing that’s not talked about enough or that’s understood enough is how light enters our eyes and sends an electrical signal to our super charismatic nucleus, our hypothalamus, and our pituitary, and these, among other brain regions, govern the function of our entire body. If we’re worried about hormonal function and hormonal balance, light is going to play a central role in how your body utilizes and the rhythms of your hormones throughout your life. It’s not something that is for the biohackers; it’s for the young. This is for every single person. I’ve worked with so many people who have had chronic issues, and when they come to me, it’s one of the fundamental things that we work on. In other words, it’s very difficult to heal when your circadian rhythm is off and your late-cycle biology is off. It’s impossible at best. You’re just going to be chasing your tail. When we start to get that in alignment, then every other aspect of healing that we’re trying to do starts to get so easy. Some of it just falls into place naturally. You don’t need supplements; you don’t need hormone creams; you don’t need other things perhaps once you get this in place. 

I’ll tell the story of a lady that I worked with who has several immune issues. She had pain, she had excess weight, and she had poor sleep. This was her main complaint. She had a series of other things in mind. The thing that we started with was, so I told her in the morning, when you wake up first thing, go outside and get light in your eyes for at least 15 to 20 minutes. Take off your glasses if you can sit there and drink tea, whatever the case is. But ideally, go for a walk, and whether it’s raining or whether it’s snowing, it doesn’t matter. As long as the sun has risen, the light is coming through the clouds, and your eyes will detect it. When she did this for probably three weeks and came back and reported that she had lost 5 to 7 pounds without changing her diet or trying anything new, her sleep improved dramatically. She was dreaming more. Her hair and her nails improved. Her nails were a little bit more rigid and brittle. They were growing faster. They were more supple. Her hair was, she said, healthier. The craziest thing was that her eyesight improved. She was not used to getting her eyes exposed to the daylight.

 The reality is that our eyes are our cells; every aspect of the cells in our eyes is just like the cells in the rest of our body. They can regenerate, they can repair, and they can heal. One of the repair mechanisms is dependent on that light getting into our eyes. doesn’t mean we stare at the sunlight, but it means that our exposure to the outside world without sunglasses, and sometimes even without our other glasses, can improve. Contacts that can improve our eyesight. She said I can hold my phone at arm’s length and see and read the text for the first time in 20 years. These are the types of things that can happen when your biology starts to harmonize again. Oftentimes we focus on sleep and getting the sleep dialed in. That’s great. But what starts that process is getting exposure to the daylight in the morning which sets the time clock of your body, so your body knows when it kickstarts cortisol and all the other hormones that get turned on in the morning. Including ghrelin, neuropeptide Y, and hunger hormones, all of these things are related to light cycles. How well do we eat, right? The cravings that we have are all related to some of these hormones that are related to the light cycle. If we get that right, then the sleep gets better during the night.  It’s the most important part of sleep and of being healthy: tying your sinking or yoking your biology to the daily life cycle so we can pause there. But it is such a critical aspect of health that if we don’t get it right, everything else is going to suffer.

Heather Sandison, ND

We’re exposed to all sorts of light all day long—screens, phones, computers, TVs, and, the lights—just incandescent lights and LEDs in our houses. What type of effect does that have on our circadian rhythm, and are there things that we can do about it?

Jason Prall

Yes, it’s fascinating. Even right now, I’ve got some bright lights in the room. These lights aren’t nearly as bright. Just in terms of the capacity, the lumens that the sun is putting off, even on a cloudy day.  Exposure to daylight is a very different thing than whatever light source we’re getting inside. The spectrum of light is very different. When we used to use incandescent bulbs, that was a little bit more of a balanced spectrum, and it contained infrared, red, orange, and the whole spectrum, even a little bit of UV. Now, the LED lights have been designed and engineered to save energy. In other words, they’re trying to put out the optimal light for the visual aspect of what we can see in our household without wasting, quote, unquote, wasting energy. The light source that’s coming out, even though we may not be able to consciously detect the difference, is a massive difference in getting outside. The other thing that’s very interesting to think about is that our skin color and our eye color matter in this regard. If you have dark skin, if you’re of African or Indian descent, you’re required to get more sunlight on the skin and in the eyes to be optimally healthy than somebody like me or you.

We have light eyes and light skin, so we don’t need as much sunlight now. We also can’t handle as much sunlight either.  There’s a balance to be had there. But it’s an important factor now, I suspect, and I don’t. I haven’t seen a lot of research to this degree, but I suspect that the indoor artificial fake light will be slightly more, let’s say, harmful to you and me than it would be to somebody with darker skin and darker eyes. It is again hard to say, but the most important thing is to recognize that indoor lighting is nowhere near the same as outdoor lighting, and we are required to get that outdoor lighting. It is so critical. Our eyes can detect subtle differences in the angle of the sun. As the sun rises, some of the rays bounce back into space. The short rays, the UV rays, the blue, and the purple get bounced back into space. That’s why the sunset is red. You might see purple and pink on the clouds if that is reflected. Our eyes can detect this. As the sun rises, our eyes are detecting these subtle shifts. As the wavelengths start to shift, our brain is now determining, I know what time of day it is. Let’s turn on this. Let’s turn off that. 

I was looking at a study that looked at thyroid transcription factors—in other words, how the genes for thyroid function turn on and off. It was at 9 a.m. There were something like 700 transcription factors turned on and 500 turned off at 9 a.m. based on the light cycle. Then at 5 p.m., it was something like 32 transcription factors and 48 transcription. In other words, there was a massive shift in how the thyroid functions just based on the light cycle. If you’re somebody with Hashimoto’s, you’re somebody with low T3, etc., etc., it may be due to not only your sleep and how you’re sleeping but also your light cycle. Are you getting attuned to the light cycle that you’re in? These are the types of things that, honestly, magic can unfold for some people when they get it right, and all the other things that you’re doing can start working. Some of you see this all the time. People are doing five, ten, or 12 different therapies, and they may all be very beneficial, but they’ll say, This didn’t work. I tried that. It’s not working, etc. Well, there may be something blocking it from working. In other words, it’s good therapy. The acupuncture you’re doing is fantastic, and it’s being done the right way. But if there’s something else blocking the flow, blocking the ability for that to take hold, then you’re just going to keep spinning your wheels at Bass Strait. This is oftentimes why something doesn’t appear to be working because there’s something else blocking the natural function or the healthy function from taking hold.

Heather Sandison, ND

Got it. There’s all this red-light therapy and even blue-light therapy for certain conditions. There are all these light therapies out there. But do you think they serve a purpose, or should we just be getting outside and using the sun?

Jason Prall

I mean, they can. They can serve a purpose. I’m one of the things that we did. I was stressed when we went to the various blue zones around the world and studied longevity from the lens of the centenarians who lived in these other cultures. The important thing that I tried to get across was that they lived that way. We don’t live that way anymore, and I don’t think we’re going back to that. They grew up without refrigerators and electricity. They lived an entirely different life and still do so today. We live in a modern world. I think it’s okay, to some degree, to accept what we’re dealing with. We have our unique challenges here that we’re dealing with that they didn’t have to deal with. I grew up in Seattle. It gets very gray, very dark, and very depressing for about four months straight. Can you introduce some blue light therapy to help you address the seasonal affective disorder? Yes, like that’s a solution.

The more natural way is to go outside, even in the rain or even in the cold. But people don’t want to do it. I understand that I didn’t want to do it, but their nature has an unbelievable way of balancing things. One of the things that we notice from the research is that places like Sweden, Norway, etc. have a massive, seasonal shift in autoimmune conditions. and it’s not explained by vitamin D alone. In other words, these conditions get worse in the winter. The autoimmune conditions and immune-related stuff get worse in the winter and get better in the summer. That’s because of the massive light difference in those very northern regions. Now, if people were living as they used to, outside of these modern boxes that are temperature-controlled all day long, then they would have been out in the cold and they would have been building fires. The cold has a benefit. It can correct some of these things. and they’re outside, especially there when there’s lots of snow. 

If you’ve ever been outside on a snowy day, it’s sometimes bright, even if the sun is not specifically shining. There’s so much reflective light. Nature has these unbelievably clever ways, so to speak, that we have become accustomed to. If one is living in a more natural way that you don’t get the seasonal affective disorder, they’re out in the cold, they’re out getting this light in their eyes. That cold therapy, this ice bath therapy that everybody’s talking about these days, does serve a purpose when it comes to hormones when it comes to mood, when it comes to, you know, all these things. All that to say is that if you can live more naturally, that is the optimal way. It’s not always the most fun. Yes, you can bring in some of these blue light therapies—infrared saunas and regular saunas—and cold therapies. These are all great ways to harmonize and create a more resilient body and mind. 

Heather Sandison, ND

Sleep deprivation is one of the things that we know is a risk factor. When it comes to dementia, Do you think that someone could use some of these practices associated with light exposure to help with something like insomnia or sleep deprivation?

Jason Prall

No question. I think the number one thing in my opinion is it’s cold, it’s sometimes difficult, especially when we get all the time to start to play in the cold. But if we can, I’ve seen several times that nervous system disorders cause all kinds of brain issues. You just start taking some cold baths or cold showers, or you can even dunk your face in cold water. There’s so much that you can do to start engaging with this stuff. Then, of course, yes, any sauna is probably the most enjoyable. It’s probably, I would say, one of the best investments somebody can make just because, especially if you don’t like the heat, then maybe not, but the fact that you can sweat, the fact that you can detoxify chemicals and metals, and all kinds of things that are huge when it comes to brain health, as well as everything else. It brings just calmness and peace. I’d say Sauna is fantastic. Good for sleep. One of the best things for sleep is a cold. You can do a little bit of cold before sleep, a cold shower, or even just a little exposure. If you’re not really into the ice, that thing is very, very good for sleep.

Most people can play around with this stuff. It’s also good for waking up. It’s a little paradoxical in that sense. One of the first things I do is take a cold bath and take a nice plunge in the morning. It wakes you up like crazy, so it helps kick start that waking response rate and cortisol response in the morning that wakes you up. That’s really what we’re looking for. We’re looking to establish our rhythms again. Remember, the body knows what to do. It’s not like we have to force ourselves to sleep or create sleep. It’s just that we have to remind our body of some of these rhythms, and it will start to get back into a flow. The cool thing about sleep is that once you start sleeping, there’s this entrainment that happens. You start getting used to these rhythms, and now you start getting tired at the same time and you start waking up at the same time. That becomes the key. 

Of course, as we get older, our sleep patterns do tend to get disrupted. It does require oftentimes a little bit more of a concerted effort to slow things down in the evening; maybe take a bath. Maybe doing some light movement, or yoga or breathwork is fantastic. Breathwork is good. There are four, seven, and eight breaths that you can do, which is a very common one. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds and then exhale for eight. That is a good way to engage the parasympathetic. What I’m talking about here is engaging the sympathetic with the cold and even the heat and then engaging the parasympathetic right with the breath. We’re going to the extremes. In other words, remembering, reminding the body what a stress response should be in a healthy way, and reminding the body what relaxation and parasympathetic tone are all about. Most of the time, or caught in no man’s land. In other words, we think we’re resting. People can meditate and be stressed out internally on the brain and nervous system levels. When we include some of these things like heat and cold look, things like breathwork, calming, breathwork, activating, breathwork, the fire breath. There’s this type of thing where we’re now influencing the nervous system, influencing biology, and reminding it how to get to the extremes and how to get back into rhythm.

These things are creating anti-fragility, an unbelievably important resilience factor. As we get older the research is abundant when it comes to cold exposure, saunas, sunlight, sleep, and breathwork, when it comes to detoxifying the brain, when it comes to balancing the nervous system, hormonal regulation, and improving mood, these are all key factors. Sometimes it does require us to get a little bit uncomfortable and get a little uncomfortable meditating, get a little bit uncomfortable doing breathwork, and get a little bit uncomfortable in the bath, in the ice baths, in the cold shower, or the sauna. What you find inevitably as you engage in these practices is that you start to enjoy them, that you start to crave them. It’s this interesting thing that I don’t know how to explain, but there’s this deep memory of what it means to be healthy in the body that starts responding in the brain, and your mood starts responding. As this harmony takes hold, it’s like it just becomes part of what you do.

Heather Sandison, ND

Incredible. You describe this phenomenal nervous system response, that contrast between sympathetic and parasympathetic; that contrast hydrotherapy is what we call it in the natural topic. We had a whole semester of learning one of these foundations that’s it? Yes, it was really fun. We’ve got to try it all. We did it like we did it for each other. We set up the ice baths, did cold plunges, went back and forth between the heat and cold, and then prescribed this in our teaching clinic for years. Profound stuff happens when you get that contrast. I think, yes, the nervous system is part of the mechanism at work, but the blood flow, just circulation, and selection are another huge component of this. As you mentioned, by turning on the hormones and the signaling that’s associated with that core medical factor—that stretching of what’s comfortable—you get the responses that build resilience over time. It’s such a fine, simple thing that you can do to promote health, longevity, and brain function that doesn’t require, I mean, I’ve set you up to be like, yes, buy this gadget. My favorite is that gadget. You’re like, No, the sun, the cold, the heat. Like maybe a sauna, but pretty. It comes back to the basics, like the foundations of what our ancestors were exposed to. Just a really fun and accessible way to think about this. 

Jason Prall

Just to go off of your feedback. The thing about this is that oftentimes when we’re looking for these other solutions, whether it be a supplement or certain technology, it’s because we’re hyper-focused on trying to solve a problem or there’s some imbalance. That’s fine. I’m a believer in those, too. The thing about when you get this circadian rhythm right—the thing about the cold and the heat, the thing about exercise and movement—this stuff impacts the body, it impacts the mind, and it impacts the emotions. It impacts your relationships. It impacts how you carry yourself through the day. That’s the thing that’s so different. When I got into the cold for the first time and I just bought my ice bath, I was like, Here we go. I didn’t like it. I knew the science, I knew the stories, and I knew all that, but I didn’t like it. Then there’s an aspect of yourself that goes, what if I just sat in there and just dealt with it, and just dealt with the cold? There’s a mental hardening that takes place. There’s a mental resilience that starts to happen. You start to become meditative. Breathwork can be done the same way. A lot of people don’t like breathing and don’t know why. It’s a very funny thing. We don’t like going into doing breathwork because it’s like work. Same thing with meditation. Meditation is a different work, so to speak, of watching ourselves and allowing. These things can be uncomfortable. Getting familiar with the uncomfortable territory comes with so many benefits. For me, it’s like I’m always looking for the biggest lever to pull right in, especially when I’m working with somebody. What can we do to hit all these things? As opposed to targeting supplements with certain things or targeting a device and doing this and that? Those are good too. 

But again, if we’re not doing these big-picture things, then we’re missing such a big aspect of what we can do. That’s why I focus on them. Look at it; they’re not sexy. Most people don’t want to do them. I understand that the way to do it is just to tiptoe. Just go in and just start trying. Once you start practicing these things, then it doesn’t get so hard. You start realizing the benefits. My wife is a perfect example; she was willing to get in there, but she was like, This is not fun. Even still, there are times, I don’t want to get in this ice bath. I do it, and I’m like, I’m so amazing. I’m so glad I got it right. There are just so many benefits. That’s why I think it’s such an important thing to focus on.

Heather Sandison, ND

Well, full circle back to the community. Find five people who do this already and hang out with them. We become the guys we spend the most time with. If there are people who we’re here recording this early January,  We all make these New Year’s resolutions. When I think about my New Year’s resolutions, I always go, Who’s already doing that? Can I text them, reach out to them, or befriend them somehow? That I can just, like, jump on their bandwagon? That’ll help me be more likely to just continue and make it a part of my practice and part of my life. If you can think of anyone who’s that or even if you are somebody who’s plugged into social media, like, follow a few of them so it stays top of mind so that you see it come up. It’s wintertime. I mentioned it’s early January, it’s cold, and I don’t want to go outside. It was 30-something degrees this morning. Also, it’s dark so early. How do seasonal changes play a role in circadian rhythm? While we’re at it, do you want to talk about the bane of my existence? Daylight Savings Changes? Can we put?

Jason Prall

I was just thinking about this morning. When are we going to stop this act, this nonsense? It’s been proposed in legislation. Certain states don’t, you know, play this game. What are we doing? Yes, the data is quite clear. When we change time zones, we see increased heart attacks, increased car accidents, learning, suffering with kids, and more sports injuries. Everything suffers from just changing the clock. One hour. It’s unbelievable. Of course, this happens when we go forward. When we move the clocks forward, we lose an hour. That’s when we see all these issues. When we go back an hour, things improve. Getting exactly two to take it easy. This is it’s very clear in the research it’s not controversial whatsoever. The thing with the seasonal shifts. It’s really difficult again if you live in the, you know, the northern regions, you know, Norway’s, Great Britain, Canada’s, because your light cycles are vastly shifting. It’s a little bit more difficult because we live indoors again. If we were living more of an outdoor life, it wouldn’t be as impactful. Our bodies would naturally adjust. Theoretically again if we were living that way, or if we’re in a modern world and still getting outside a lot, then our bodies, our eyes, everything’s picking up to the seasonal shifts. It’s going to start shifting, and our bodies are going to start shifting. There’s research that shows thyroid function decreases during the winter. That makes sense. Intuitively speaking, when you understand what the thyroid is governing in terms of metabolism, you slow things down. We go into a bit of hibernation mode. We put on a little extra weight like this is how we should be functioning. 

Theoretically, if we’re living more of an indigenous type of lifestyle, we would slow down. We wouldn’t be expending as many calories; we would be more stationary. Especially in those northern climates. Now, of course, if we’re living near the equator, that’s a different story. Now we have wet seasons, dry seasons, and fruits to change like animal migration patterns. Hey, these types of things. In the northern climates, we do the best we can. The key is to get as much daylight in your eyes as you can. You get up. Before I remember getting up in Seattle at 5 a.m., way before the sunrise. I would drive to work and I would be in a box for most of my day, and then I’d come home. By the time I’m driving home, it’s already dark again. I get the challenge here, especially in the winter, if you can go outside, if that’s you, then go outside during your lunch hour and go for a walk, go to it, walk to the restaurant, whatever the case is, just get your eyes exposed to light because that signal is still there and it’s required. During the winter and during the summer, it’s like the key is just to get your eyes, in particular, exposed to the daylight as much as you can. 

Same thing with summer. The more sun you can get exposed to, the higher your vitamin D production. The higher your melatonin production at night, the higher your cortisol waking response in the morning. Everything starts to function better when we get this light exposure right. It’s imaginable that there have been studies where somebody has gone down in essentially a cave with no sunlight exposure. What happens is that their sleeping pattern starts to drift. In other words, there’s no cue for the body to say it’s morning. The body’s naturally wandering. Essentially, the rhythms are just completely off. He doesn’t know when to sleep or when to eat. Everything just starts to get chaotic because that light is not cueing; it’s not sinking. The body’s rhythm. We need that. It is a requirement for a body. I’m sure I sound like a broken record, but this is what I would have to do with my clients every time. You don’t get that you must do this. I would just, tell them what to do, and they do it, and that’s great. But it’s so important. It runs so contrary to some of our patterns normally that it’s difficult to break the habit and to get outside of the way that we’re operating.

Heather Sandison, ND

Put this in super practical terms. If somebody wanted to have the ideal routine, what would it look like? Maybe people would be listening to this, probably in the afternoon. Starting with an evening routine.

Jason Prall

Sure. Evening routine is essentially the same no matter what season it is for you. As the sun is starting to set, that’s a cue to your internal biology to slow things down. Ideally, we wouldn’t be exercising after the sun goes down. Imagine yourself living more native way. What would you be doing? You’d be eating dinner probably before the sun goes down. Imagine you didn’t have lights to turn on. You only had fire, candles, and these types of things. You wouldn’t be exercising. You wouldn’t be running, and you wouldn’t be doing pushups. You would be starting to clean up the household. You’d be taking things, getting ready for bed, putting the kids to bed, whatever the case, everything starts to just calm down because you have to get up in the morning to tend to the craft, attend to the animals, do the work for the day, etc. When does that start? When the sun comes up, the sun comes up, or even just before. All the animals start waking, or the birds start waking. Life starts to come to life. As that happens, we get up and go outside to tend to the crops, animals, and so on. We build things, and we do things right. We’re starting to start our day. It’s the movement. 

At night, or slowing things down and following the rhythm. But we’re preparing our minds. We’re preparing our bodies for sleep, which means don’t overstimulate. Ideally, we’re not watching screens. Ideally, we’re not; we’re reducing our stimulus as much as we can. Now, in the Western world, we may need to add some things. We may need to do some meditation. We may need to take a bath and listen to some beautiful music. We may need to read a book like a real book, not a Kindle. We may need to start doing some of these things to engage in that restful parasympathetic activity. We can use essential oils, we can use even the lights, and we can do all kinds of cool things to assist that process. The orange lights are great. In fact, for a lot of my clients, I would have them buy orange lights and put them in lamps so they could shut off the overhead lights, turn on the orange lamps, and they’d have this glow of orange, and they’d be in their house, and their neighbors thought they were crazy. But then they started getting sleepy at 8:30 instead of 11:30.

After some time, without that much exposure, without that much stimulus, the body starts going. Then that’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the body to tell you, Hey, we’re tired and going to bed. As that’s happening, you don’t have to force a bedtime because the body’s telling you it’s time, and then you’re going to bed and you’re sleeping. Eventually, you’re going to go to sleep a little bit more thoroughly. It may take some time. This re-synchronization of the rhythm can take three weeks or more. But ideally, we’re going to be sleeping better, deeper, and longer, and then we’ll be waking up when the sun comes up. Ideally, we’ll be waking up just before the sun or with the sun and going outside and getting that sunlight. When we start doing this, the digestion starts to improve in the middle of the day. We get really good digestive capacity, and we get really good cortisol spikes in the morning. We’re energized, and we’re ready to go. Our pain has decreased. We’re not particularly hungry, like all these signals that are dysfunctional in many of us. But when we’re not on our optimal circadian rhythm things start to improve. We’re not craving the sweets, the caffeine, and all the other things in the morning just to get going. Our bodies are naturally doing these things; the hunger is a little bit blunted. That’s how it starts to develop. We eat our big meals during the day, and most of our exercise should be done in the middle of the day. Ideally. Again, this goes contrary to our modern lifestyle. If you can’t do this, then that’s understandable. I’m just trying to paint the optimal picture of what we can do.

Heather Sandison, ND

Yes, I think that’s perfect. What’s ideal is that I’ve heard the metaphor. It’s like the horizon. We’re never going to arrive there. But sometimes if we can shift just a few things, like our light exposure before bed or what time we wake up and how we expose ourselves to sunlight, doing some breath work, or doing some movement, then that may be enough. Like our bodies have built-in, they are designed to heal and be aligned with these rhythms. Just a little nudge in that direction can lead to tremendous benefits. As you’ve mentioned, I’ve also seen it over and over again with patients, and I’ve experienced it myself. Valuable stuff, Jason. Thank you so much for sharing. You might want our listeners to know where they can find out more about you.

Jason Prall

Yes, you can go to awakenedhealthacademy.com. That’s where I have a lot of the content that I’ve filmed over the years, some courses, and that thing. If you’re in the San Diego area, we have a physical location that we just opened up called Sun Reset. This is like a brain retraining technology that allows the neural patterns that have been created over the years due to various head injuries, stress, chronic illness, and several other things. We all have these brain patterns that are a little bit more wired for stress and interrupt a lot of the natural processes of our body, which prevents us from being fully healthy for many of us. We can reset that with this technology. It’s unbelievable because all it is is sound. It’s just that you put earbuds in, and you hear some sounds. We read your brain activity with MRI technology, and your brain’s able to see its function, see its activity, and then correct itself. It’s something that I’m super excited to bring to the San Diego area. It’s unbelievable for anxiety, depression, memory issues, traumatic brain injuries, addictions, and several other conditions that are related to the brain and how it’s functioning. Those are the two main places.

Heather Sandison, ND

What a phenomenal resource! Thank you so much, Jason, for being here and for your time and generosity. It’s a pleasure to see you.

Jason Prall

Always makes others happy.