Some of you will wake up before the sun comes out . And if you're asking whether or not turning on artificial lights can replace sunlight at those hours . Unfortunately , the answer is no , unless you have a very special light , we'll talk about what kind of light , the bright artificial lights in your home environment are not , I repeat , are not going to be sufficiently bright to turn on the cortisol mechanism and the other wake up mechanisms that you need early in the day .
So there's this asymmetry in our retinal , our eye biology and in our brains biology , whereby early in the day , right around waking , you need a lot of light , a lot of photons , a lot of light energy and artificial lights generally just won't accomplish what you need them to accomplish . But at night , even a little bit of artificial light can really mess up your so called circadian , your 24 hour clocks and all these mechanisms that we're talking about . So if you wake up before the sun is out and it's still dark , please turn on as many bright artificial lights as you possibly can or need .
Second of all , if you wake up before the sun is out , you can and probably should flip on artificial lights in your internal home environment or apartment or wherever you happen to live . If your goal is to be awake , if you wake up at four in the morning and you need to be awake , well , then turn on artificial lights once the sun is out . However , once the sun has risen , then you still want to get outside and view sunlight .
So this is really the foundational power tool for ensuring a great night's sleep and for feeling more awake during the day . Second of all , if you wake up before the sun is out , you can and probably should flip on artificial lights in your internal home environment or apartment or wherever you happen to live . If your goal is to be awake , if you wake up at four in the morning and you need to be awake , well , then turn on artificial lights once the sun is out .
But at night , even a little bit of artificial light can really mess up your so called circadian , your 24 hour clocks and all these mechanisms that we're talking about . So if you wake up before the sun is out and it's still dark , please turn on as many bright artificial lights as you possibly can or need . But then get outside once the sun is out on cloudy days , you especially need to get outside .
