Most of us feel at least a little fatigued a good bit of the time. This isn’t natural. We should all feel alert and engaged through most of the day, almost every day. The reason we struggle with fatigue is that we don’t pay enough attention to our body’s basic needs. Part of meeting these needs is adequate sleep and exercise, and good nutrition. Since these topics are covered extensively in other sections of this site (The Pillars of Health, Simple Enjoyable Healthy Eating, Exercise Overview, Sleeping Well) , we won’t devote time to them here. But when you exercise, eat, and sleep is also critical. This is because of something called your “circadian rhythm”.

The word “circadian” means “around (circa) the day (dian)”. Each of us has a circadian rhythm that serves as our body’s master clock. Our bodies have different needs at different times of the day. One obvious example of this is that we need to wake up in the morning and sleep at night. Waking up requires the action of a number of chemicals that stimulate our bodies: chemicals like cortisol and adrenalin. Conversely, falling asleep requires a different set of chemicals. Melatonin is an important sleep chemical that you may have heard of. It’s very important that the right chemicals get released at the right time. If our bodies released melatonin (a sleep chemical) into our brains in the morning, we’d have a hard time getting up and getting focused. If we started releasing cortisol and adrenalin (wake up chemicals) at night, we wouldn’t be able to fall asleep.

Our ability to feel alert and engaged during the day and to sleep deeply at night depends on having the right brain chemistry released at the right time. A healthy circadian rhythm (sometimes thought of as the body clock) ensures this balance. The health of our circadian rhythm is certainly influenced by how much we exercise and sleep, and what we eat. The general exercise and nutrition advice on this site will contribute to a healthy circadian rhythm, as part of contributing to your overall health and fitness. But a healthy circadian rhythm is even more dependent on when we exercise, eat, and sleep. Developing a healthy circadian rhythm by applying the principles and action steps below will help you to feel more energized during the day and to sleep more deeply at night.

Stay Energized Naturally Principles

1. Early to Bed, Early to Rise… At Least Most of the Time

We know it sounds like no fun, but if you start getting into and out of bed earlier, you’ll start feeling a lot better. Our bodies are built to go to sleep at sundown and wake up at sunrise. If you’ve ever been camping, you’ve probably noticed that in contrast to your normal schedule of staying up until midnight, or even 2am or 3am, you seem to naturally fall asleep around 9pm or 10pm. And when you do, you wake up when the sun hits your eyes at 6am. Out amidst nature, our body chemistry powerfully responds to the rising and setting of the sun. In fact, our circadian rhythm is built to be tuned into nature, reving our bodies up with the rising of the sun, and slowing us down when the sun sets. But amidst our modern world of electric lights, television, and constantly being on the go, our circadian rhythm can begin to break down. When our circadian rhythm breaks down, we have trouble sleeping deeply at night, and we feel less alert during the day. Repairing the circadian rhythm is a must do for anyone who struggles with fatigue or insomnia, and is a critical part of general health and well being.

Fair enough you say. Why can’t I build my circadian rhythm so that I fall asleep at 2am and wake up at 10am? The tricky part is, even with electric lights and alarm clocks, it is impossible to build a healthy circadian rhythm that is out of phase with the sun. Unless you take up residence in an underground cave, your body will know when the sun is shining and when it isn’t, and will try to adjust your wake/sleep schedule accordingly. Staying up long past sunset and sleeping in long past sunrise means distorting your circadian rhythm, and the result is less energy during the day and less restful sleep at night.

Obviously it isn’t realistic for all of us to go to bed at sunset (especially in winter!) and wake at the crack of dawn. But the closer we come to this, the more energized and healthy we will feel. Ideally, you should get to bed by 10pm and wake up around 6:30am. But the most important thing is to make 11:30pm to 5:30am sacred. Try to get 7-9 hours of sleep per night, and make sure that the 11:30pm to 5:30am window is part of it. This means that you can sleep from 9:30pm to 6:00am, or from 11:30pm to 8:00am, or somewhere in between. But staying up past midnight, or waking up before 5am or after 9am will always tax your body and compromise both your waking and sleeping hours (this is less true for teenagers and children, who's bodies and brains tend to do better when they can sleep in). Stick to this plan six nights per week. If you do end up out late on a Friday or Saturday, get up at your normal time and make sure that you are in bed at a reasonable hour the next night. If you need to stay up late two nights per week, try to space them out, say, Wednesday and Saturday. Staying up late more than two nights in any given week really begins to run you down, as does staying up late two nights back to back.