The thing is, comparing small mammal (or any other mammal) sleep patterns to humans is like comparing apples to oranges, or better still. After 1 week, however, everything seems in sync and you'll be fine.Ĭolor me skeptical. I know that when I've missed meals everything gets "thrown off" and the "real" light-based biological clock seems to re-assert itself again. If you don't, you will likely "mess up" all of your progress. Just force yourself to go back to sleep and suffer through it.įor the next week, you MUST eat regular meals and go to bed and wake at the same time each day. During sleep, you may wake up with incredible hunger. The best course of action is to live a sedentary, yet mildly active lifestyle until it is time to sleep. The big problems with this is exercise - if you plan on working out during this period, you will get unusually tired and you will need to eat. After that, you have to resist the urge to eat until 6 the next morning. This first day, you WILL be tired for the first few hours, maybe until 3 PM, since that is 7 AM Taiwan time. The most difficult part are is you have to stay awake from the moment your plane lands in Los Angeles, which is normally 4 AM in the morning Taiwan time. For this to work properly, once my plane lands in Los Angeles I eat lunch, then stop eating after 2 PM and do not eat again until 6 AM the next morning. In my case, I've flown back from Taiwan on a flight that leaves Taiwan at around 4 PM and arrives in Los Angeles around noon. It is also the only really difficult part about doing this. The key, in my opinion, is the 16 hour fast. At the very least, it works better than all of the alternatives I've tried, which is just staying up during normal hours, slowly rotating my time around to the new schedule. So, I wanted to say that I have now tried this technique two times now and it appears to work. One starvation cycle is enough to override the traditional light-based circadian clock, the study suggests. The shift is a survival mechanism in small mammals that forces them to change their sleeping patterns, Fuller suggests. "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." Even a few days of starvation, a common threat in natural environments, may result in death," the study said. "For a small mammal, finding food on a daily basis is a critical mission. Here's a quick summary of Saper's research findings: Like everything else in our evolutionary history, it has to do with survival. Make sure you eat a nice healthy meal to jumpstart your system.Īnother example: If you are traveling from Los Angeles to Tokyo, figure out when breakfast is served in Tokyo, and don't eat for the 12-16 hours before Tokyo's breakfast time.Ĭombined with other hacks to help you get more sleep and be more productive, you can quickly adjust to any time zone. Your body will consider the time you break your fast as your new "morning."įor 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.
Once you start eating again, your internal clock will be reset as though it is the start of a new day. Simply stop eating during the 12-16 hour period before you want to be awake. To think that this new "food clock" hack can help you change your internal clock in one day is mind boggling. It usually takes people a week to fully adjust to a new time zone or sleeping schedule. 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. The lead researcher Clifford Saper explains: This mechanism probably evolved to make sure starving mammals don't go to sleep when they should be foraging for food. Now they have found a second "food clock" that takes over when we are hungry. Scientists have long known that our circadian rhythm is regulated by our exposure to light. (See also: Tips for Sounder Sleep at Hotels) This discovery can drastically improve a person's ability to cope with jet lag or adjust to working late shifts.
Not eating for 12-16 hours can help people quickly reset their sleep-wake cycle, according to a study from the Harvard Medical School.
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