Trouble getting to sleep? Camping trip will get you dozing nicely, experts say
Unlike the glow of a computer or TV, a campfire and starlight do not disturb sleep patterns, TOM SPEARS writes.
Your camping trip this summer provided more than fresh air. There’s a strong chance it also reset your sleep cycle to a more natural time.
The University of Colorado at Boulder says the benefit comes from changes in light. Its volunteers camping in the Rockies were allowed nighttime campfires, but not flashlights or electronics.
And their study fits into a wave of recent evidence showing the orangered glow of natural firelight doesn’t keep us awake at night, but the bluish light from TV, computers and cellphones does. Real darkness at night also helps, the Boulder scientists found. You get better darkness at a campsite or a cottage than in the city.
All eight volunteer campers shifted to an earlier schedule during the week in the wilderness, paralleling the day and night. And the ones who experienced the greatest change were the ones who started as night owls. There were six men and two women, with a mean (average) age of 30.
“What’s remarkable is how, when we’re exposed to natural sunlight, our clocks perfectly become in sync in less than a week to the solar day,” said researcher Kenneth Wright, a neuroscientist at the university. The work is published in a research journal called Current Biology.
Wright could have asked Kirsten Sullivan, who works at Trailhead Paddleshack in Ottawa and does a lot of camping.
Time in a tent, she says, realigns her sleep to the sun’s own schedule: rising early and falling asleep early. That’s a distinct change from her schedule when she has time off in the city.
“I’m definitely on-clock with the sun and the moon whenever I’m camping,” she said.
“And it’s not just me, either. It’s also my boyfriend and all of our friends.”
Sullivan also tries to avoid electronics such as computers in the evening, in order to let her brain prepare for sleep.
And new research from Ohio State University says that’s a good plan, too. The university finds that even a small light source at night, such as a night light, can disrupt the sleep cycle if it’s a harsh electronic glow.
It’s a study of hamsters, not humans, but it showed that blue and white light caused a reaction in cells in the retina that are linked to the “circadian” rhythm — the body’s sense of day and night. Red light caused very little reaction.
“In nearly every measure we had, hamsters exposed to blue light were the worst off, followed by those exposed to white light,” the team announced. “While total darkness was best, red light was not nearly as bad as the other wavelengths we studied.”
At Boulder, Wright says that a burst of early-morning daylight is a good way to set the brain back on a daytime schedule. He prescribes an outdoor walk.