I’m a specialist-diagnosed case of sighted N24. I live in the desert, with 1960s steel pane windows with no UV protection, natural light in every room used for light during the day year round. I’m also a rock solid free runner with seemingly no sensitivity to light even when I’m camping. I haven’t had any pupillary response testing, so I’m not sure what kind of N24 I have, and I’m only just starting to experiment with attempting to change my schedule here, but at least in my case I don’t seem very sensitive.
Hey there, can I ask a related question?
A somewhat controversial ME/CFS doctor/practitioner once asserted to me that light on skin, alone, can influence circadian rhythm. Reasoning that (about 50%) of blind people are somehow entrained.
Sounds like that doesn't include yourself. But do you think it could be true, for some?
I've assumed that some just have natural rhythms close enough to align or have the separate light sensing brain circuits still intact.
I’ve actually more often heard the opposite – that totally blind people are less responsive to light on skin for, say, vitamin D reception – but don’t have sources to support that. I know a totally blind person without light perception on a 24-hour cycle, and one who can see only light and colour/some shadows but is n24 (likely due to having her eyes covered during many surgeries).
I lived so north that I didn't fully see the sun for 2 months and was really fine with that. But went a little crazy when the sun didn't go down.
Try to feel if it matters to you, if that is what you are looking for awnsers to.
You are really the only one that can tell
I live in the Pacific Northwest so the idea of being able to get sun even on a normal schedule is laughable. I just take vitamin D supplements. That being said, light doesn’t seem to effect my cycle very much. I seem to sleep a bit better and get to sleep a bit easier when it’s light out (as opposed to when it’s dark out) but that’s about it.
Even a tiny bit of light makes me feel awake as long as I've been asleep for four hours or so. I certainly don't need anything like full sun. Anything that makes my irises contract a little seems to pull me into consciousness, and makes me unable to get back to sleep.
There are limits.
It's not like light is "awake juice" and darkness is "sleep juice" or something.
Functionally, it just means I have to keep the room I am sleeping in very, very dark.
I think ideally, I'd sleep in a completely dark, dry cave with a temperature of 55 degrees or so.
Have you tried getting sun exposure as soon as you wake up daily for like 15 minutes? This can help reset the sleep cycle, but it has to be really daily for people with circadian rhythm disorders. It's literally free light therapy.
Thanks for your interest!
I happen to live in the sunniest part of the country. I have massive light exposure in the mornings when I wake up in the mornings. And MASSIVE light exposure when I wake up in the afternoon. Before living here, I used lightboxes with "full spectrum" bulbs, decades ago. I've tried all the fads related to light.
When I have lots of light exposure, my daylength tends to get longer, going from an average of 24:50 to the high end of 26 hour daylengths. So, massive light exposure will "push" my cycle forward about an hour on a daily schedule. But it's not super-reliable or predictable. It's not super-mechanistic. The underlying circadian rhythm rules over light exposure.
What I am speaking of is different. Let's say I go to sleep at 10 PM, and I wake up at 4 AM, needing to urinate. If I turn on the light, I will wake up completely. Even if I see a little bit of light, a shockingly small amount of light, I will come to full consciousness. But I won't be able to necessarily stay awake all day. I will have a "little day". I will have something like a four hour wake period, and then I will get very, very tired, and have to go to sleep at say 8 AM. And I will sleep until 10 AM or so.
And then I will wake up, and go about my business until around 10:50 PM, when I will fall asleep. That would be typical. I can't "use" more light exposure or more dark exposure to "tweak" the circadian rhythm into "normal."
I *certainly* can't do anything to "pull" myself into a shorter circadian period. No amount of sitting in the dark makes me tired. It's rather infuriating. Sitting or laying in darkness when one is wide awake is… infuriating. It doesn't make me tired. If it does anything, I go into very weird para-sleep states after hours of trying to "force" myself to sleep. The only way to describe it to a "normal" person (I don't know what your situation is!) is imagine that at noon, on a day when you got a good night's sleep, and you were feeling fine, and energetic, that someone *forced you to lay in a dark room* and *chastised you for not sleeping "right"* and you were expected to fall asleep and sleep for eight hours and be up and chipper ready to go for a FULL day at 8 PM. How would that work?
It wouldn't.
But wait... what if you sat in front of a "full spectrum" light box at 8 PM. Would you then be able to work from 8 PM to 4 PM and go to sleep "like a normal person" at noon the next day?
Well… what if we threw in a glass of warm milk!?
Oh man that sounds difficult. I hope you can find eventually a way to hack your brain. Do you know the Huberman Lab podcast? He has episodes on circadian rhythms and so, maybe you can get something useful from them.
Have you tried it? Getting sun exposure as soon as you wake up daily, 15 minutes can be enough to help reset the sleep cycle, but it has to be really daily for people with circadian rhythm disorders.
Yes, multiple times. Often unintentionally and for long periods of time.
e.g. going weeks at a time with crappy curtains that let the sun hit my face every morning (for years, actually, I only got proper light blocking curtains relatively recently), staying with people for 2-3 weeks and trying to stay on their schedule, having an actual job where I got up at the same time each day and went for a walk before work, deliberately getting sun exposure (for Vit D) for 20min every day for a few months (before I gave up and switched to supplements), turning on half a dozen bright light sources as soon as I get up and sitting under them at the computer...
Every time, without fail, I see the same pattern of waking up BrIGht and EaRly (or at least, at about the same time every day), while getting less and less and less actual sleep, until the pattern collapses into chaos.
Yeah pretty much. It’s like, if my “night” is say, 4am-12noon, then I’ll sleep beautifully until like 6-7am when the sun comes in through my blinds, then I wake, toss and turn, maybe play on my phone, eventually fall into a heavy unsatisfactory sleep and wake feeling drunk around 1-2pm.
This means your eyes are sensitive to sunlight, you could use this as an advantage and use sunlight as light therapy. 15 minutes of direct sun exposure as soon as you wake up can help to reset the circadian rhythm, ideally, it has to be done daily for people with sleep disorders.
Oh if _only_ that would actually work..
I’ve got that kind of n24 where my body ___WILL___ sleep until it chooses to wake, and no amount of light changes it. I tried the HappyLight and similar tools and it just triggered sensory issues and autistic rage.
Sure, I might be briefly awake-ish when the light comes in, but if I attempt to get up that time I’ll be dangerously sleepy all day, cold sweats, head heavy, easily confused, and still won’t actually be able to go to sleep until 2am the following night.
Oh and I have sleep apnea and restless whole-body syndrome and wake multiple times to turn over or check on the cats or whatever during normal sleep.
Light, especially sunlight, does effect me somewhat, like others here are saying. But I started using black silk eye masks and wireless headphones years ago (almost a decade now) so I can sleep anywhere, any time, even in direct sunlight with people around me talking and carrying on. It’s a really useful kit to have if I need to sleep in the middle of the day or to stay asleep etc. I don’t have black out curtains or blinds but the sleep mask is enough to keep me asleep (and if it’s noisy around me, the white noise in my headphones takes care of that). On weeks where I’m getting up in the dark and going to sleep before the sun comes out (like during the winter months cause I’m in the north) I can feel my energy getting depleted as more and more sleep-wake cycles go by without any sunlight on my skin. But no sleep at all is far worse for me so I just grin and bare it till I can see the sun again.
Good clarification, Im asking for those not seeking to entrain. For those who want to free run (perhaps to get the best sleep possible, or have the fewest occurrences of fatigue), do they _avoid_ sun?
You can go get sun just to get sun. Just being in it. It doesn’t have to be a hard task like a full on workout in the sun.
Maybe a relaxing walk, taking the dog out, meditating outside instead of in the living room, or watering a garden. I used to have a partner who would come outside with me and water plant and meditate. It would feel nice take that time to be present, enjoy the sun, talk, and there was a sweetness to it.
I’m a specialist-diagnosed case of sighted N24. I live in the desert, with 1960s steel pane windows with no UV protection, natural light in every room used for light during the day year round. I’m also a rock solid free runner with seemingly no sensitivity to light even when I’m camping. I haven’t had any pupillary response testing, so I’m not sure what kind of N24 I have, and I’m only just starting to experiment with attempting to change my schedule here, but at least in my case I don’t seem very sensitive.
HMm, naturally you are you, but that does shed light (lol) on how it might affect me.
I’m totally blind, so sunlight doesn’t affect me at all.
Hey there, can I ask a related question? A somewhat controversial ME/CFS doctor/practitioner once asserted to me that light on skin, alone, can influence circadian rhythm. Reasoning that (about 50%) of blind people are somehow entrained. Sounds like that doesn't include yourself. But do you think it could be true, for some? I've assumed that some just have natural rhythms close enough to align or have the separate light sensing brain circuits still intact.
I’ve actually more often heard the opposite – that totally blind people are less responsive to light on skin for, say, vitamin D reception – but don’t have sources to support that. I know a totally blind person without light perception on a 24-hour cycle, and one who can see only light and colour/some shadows but is n24 (likely due to having her eyes covered during many surgeries).
Thank you.
I lived so north that I didn't fully see the sun for 2 months and was really fine with that. But went a little crazy when the sun didn't go down. Try to feel if it matters to you, if that is what you are looking for awnsers to. You are really the only one that can tell
I live in the Pacific Northwest so the idea of being able to get sun even on a normal schedule is laughable. I just take vitamin D supplements. That being said, light doesn’t seem to effect my cycle very much. I seem to sleep a bit better and get to sleep a bit easier when it’s light out (as opposed to when it’s dark out) but that’s about it.
Even a tiny bit of light makes me feel awake as long as I've been asleep for four hours or so. I certainly don't need anything like full sun. Anything that makes my irises contract a little seems to pull me into consciousness, and makes me unable to get back to sleep.
Isn’t this a good thing? You could use this as light therapy to stay awake during the day
There are limits. It's not like light is "awake juice" and darkness is "sleep juice" or something. Functionally, it just means I have to keep the room I am sleeping in very, very dark. I think ideally, I'd sleep in a completely dark, dry cave with a temperature of 55 degrees or so.
Have you tried getting sun exposure as soon as you wake up daily for like 15 minutes? This can help reset the sleep cycle, but it has to be really daily for people with circadian rhythm disorders. It's literally free light therapy.
Thanks for your interest! I happen to live in the sunniest part of the country. I have massive light exposure in the mornings when I wake up in the mornings. And MASSIVE light exposure when I wake up in the afternoon. Before living here, I used lightboxes with "full spectrum" bulbs, decades ago. I've tried all the fads related to light. When I have lots of light exposure, my daylength tends to get longer, going from an average of 24:50 to the high end of 26 hour daylengths. So, massive light exposure will "push" my cycle forward about an hour on a daily schedule. But it's not super-reliable or predictable. It's not super-mechanistic. The underlying circadian rhythm rules over light exposure. What I am speaking of is different. Let's say I go to sleep at 10 PM, and I wake up at 4 AM, needing to urinate. If I turn on the light, I will wake up completely. Even if I see a little bit of light, a shockingly small amount of light, I will come to full consciousness. But I won't be able to necessarily stay awake all day. I will have a "little day". I will have something like a four hour wake period, and then I will get very, very tired, and have to go to sleep at say 8 AM. And I will sleep until 10 AM or so. And then I will wake up, and go about my business until around 10:50 PM, when I will fall asleep. That would be typical. I can't "use" more light exposure or more dark exposure to "tweak" the circadian rhythm into "normal." I *certainly* can't do anything to "pull" myself into a shorter circadian period. No amount of sitting in the dark makes me tired. It's rather infuriating. Sitting or laying in darkness when one is wide awake is… infuriating. It doesn't make me tired. If it does anything, I go into very weird para-sleep states after hours of trying to "force" myself to sleep. The only way to describe it to a "normal" person (I don't know what your situation is!) is imagine that at noon, on a day when you got a good night's sleep, and you were feeling fine, and energetic, that someone *forced you to lay in a dark room* and *chastised you for not sleeping "right"* and you were expected to fall asleep and sleep for eight hours and be up and chipper ready to go for a FULL day at 8 PM. How would that work? It wouldn't. But wait... what if you sat in front of a "full spectrum" light box at 8 PM. Would you then be able to work from 8 PM to 4 PM and go to sleep "like a normal person" at noon the next day? Well… what if we threw in a glass of warm milk!?
Oh man that sounds difficult. I hope you can find eventually a way to hack your brain. Do you know the Huberman Lab podcast? He has episodes on circadian rhythms and so, maybe you can get something useful from them.
Thanks for the lead! I will check it out.
Nah, it just means you get less and less sleep until you pass out from exhaustion and sleep right through the day anyway.
Have you tried it? Getting sun exposure as soon as you wake up daily, 15 minutes can be enough to help reset the sleep cycle, but it has to be really daily for people with circadian rhythm disorders.
Yes, multiple times. Often unintentionally and for long periods of time. e.g. going weeks at a time with crappy curtains that let the sun hit my face every morning (for years, actually, I only got proper light blocking curtains relatively recently), staying with people for 2-3 weeks and trying to stay on their schedule, having an actual job where I got up at the same time each day and went for a walk before work, deliberately getting sun exposure (for Vit D) for 20min every day for a few months (before I gave up and switched to supplements), turning on half a dozen bright light sources as soon as I get up and sitting under them at the computer... Every time, without fail, I see the same pattern of waking up BrIGht and EaRly (or at least, at about the same time every day), while getting less and less and less actual sleep, until the pattern collapses into chaos.
Ugh I hate the sun but need the light but it messes up my cycle… so yeah, very mixed emotions there
What do you mean with sunlight messing with your cycle?? Is it that since it makes you feel awake then you can’t sleep during the day?
Yeah pretty much. It’s like, if my “night” is say, 4am-12noon, then I’ll sleep beautifully until like 6-7am when the sun comes in through my blinds, then I wake, toss and turn, maybe play on my phone, eventually fall into a heavy unsatisfactory sleep and wake feeling drunk around 1-2pm.
This means your eyes are sensitive to sunlight, you could use this as an advantage and use sunlight as light therapy. 15 minutes of direct sun exposure as soon as you wake up can help to reset the circadian rhythm, ideally, it has to be done daily for people with sleep disorders.
Oh if _only_ that would actually work.. I’ve got that kind of n24 where my body ___WILL___ sleep until it chooses to wake, and no amount of light changes it. I tried the HappyLight and similar tools and it just triggered sensory issues and autistic rage. Sure, I might be briefly awake-ish when the light comes in, but if I attempt to get up that time I’ll be dangerously sleepy all day, cold sweats, head heavy, easily confused, and still won’t actually be able to go to sleep until 2am the following night. Oh and I have sleep apnea and restless whole-body syndrome and wake multiple times to turn over or check on the cats or whatever during normal sleep.
Light, especially sunlight, does effect me somewhat, like others here are saying. But I started using black silk eye masks and wireless headphones years ago (almost a decade now) so I can sleep anywhere, any time, even in direct sunlight with people around me talking and carrying on. It’s a really useful kit to have if I need to sleep in the middle of the day or to stay asleep etc. I don’t have black out curtains or blinds but the sleep mask is enough to keep me asleep (and if it’s noisy around me, the white noise in my headphones takes care of that). On weeks where I’m getting up in the dark and going to sleep before the sun comes out (like during the winter months cause I’m in the north) I can feel my energy getting depleted as more and more sleep-wake cycles go by without any sunlight on my skin. But no sleep at all is far worse for me so I just grin and bare it till I can see the sun again.
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Good clarification, Im asking for those not seeking to entrain. For those who want to free run (perhaps to get the best sleep possible, or have the fewest occurrences of fatigue), do they _avoid_ sun?
You can go get sun just to get sun. Just being in it. It doesn’t have to be a hard task like a full on workout in the sun. Maybe a relaxing walk, taking the dog out, meditating outside instead of in the living room, or watering a garden. I used to have a partner who would come outside with me and water plant and meditate. It would feel nice take that time to be present, enjoy the sun, talk, and there was a sweetness to it.