Physical Health Foundations #1: Circadian Rhythms

Sara Childers (00:01.038)
Well, welcome today. We are talking about all things circadian rhythms and I'm going to break down for you why circadian rhythms are the first place you need to start when it comes to your health and why circadian rhythms are pretty much a make or break when it comes to our metabolic health, our hormone health, and even our gut health. And if you're new here and you don't know, my name is Sarah Childers and this is the Metabolic Wisdom Podcast.

And this is our, I think, fifth episode. And in the last few podcasts, I've been building on my foundational philosophies around health. In the first episode, I talked all about what it means to be a fully feminine, fully embodied, hormonally balanced woman. And then I also went through, in the last three episodes, of mind, body, and spirit, and how those are actually foundational for women's health.

And if you're interested in listening to those podcasts or watching those videos on YouTube, you can check out my playlist or my podcast on Apple or Spotify. But the reason I chose today to break down circadian rhythms is because I wanted this to be the first real tangible, physical, concrete principle we talk about when it comes to

building really sustainable health as a woman and circadian rhythms are really where it's at. So if you don't know what circadian rhythms are, I'm going to explain those to you. I'm also going to explain how they affect your hormones and your gut health. And then I'm going to give you some tips towards the end with some really useful apps or things you can buy on Amazon on ways that you can kind of

go against the grain and sync up your circadian rhythms so that your body works in harmony with itself and nature because circadian rhythms actually are based off of our light exposure from sunlight so sunrise sunset and when the sun is at its highest point but since we're starting this talking about circadian rhythms

Sara Childers (02:21.422)
I think it's important to hit on why should this come first. So the reason that this should come first is because if circadian rhythms are based off of a time clock and if they're based off of the sunrise and the sunset, it's based off of a schedule. And if you are going to change your life, the first thing you need to do is change your schedule because if you can't schedule in health, then when is that going to happen?

And as you get into your health, as you want to support your hormones and as you want to eat more protein and have a well balanced diet and get more sleep or go on a walk, exercise, or even add in supplements, you need to already have a really good concrete schedule already in place. And so that is another reason why...

Starting with circadian rhythms is so important because when you lay that foundation you can more easily see what space you have to work with within your day to shift your health, add in a workout, when to go to sleep, when you could prioritize supplementation or sitting in sauna or lymphatic drainage or something. So that is why it's so important to start there but

let's kind of get into what are circadian rhythms and how they work. So I'm not going to go into such extensive detail that I confuse you on what circadian rhythms are. I'm going to try to put this as, you know, simply as I can, but circadian rhythms basically are, are

Sara Childers (04:19.512)
circadian rhythms are pretty much how our body regulates itself through gene expression hormone release and digestion based off the light exposure that we have so our eyes actually Detect light and When our eyes detect light there's a part of our brain called the supracasmic

nucleus, could be saying this wrong, but it looks like it says the suprachasmic nucleus in our brains detects light and tells the rest of our body what time it is and what to do. So for instance, our entire body has its own time clock, its own 24 hour time clock and

This is not a new concept. This is actually a really ancient concept that we've lost with Western medicine. Almost every single historic ancient way of doing medicine has a 24 hour time clock in its practice. For example, the Chinese time clock for your body, the Chinese body clock actually tells hour by hour

what organ is most active. And if you're curious, I'm going to put it up on the screen. So if you're on Spotify or YouTube, you can actually see what the Chinese medicine clock looks like. And it's based off of a circadian rhythm. So basically our bodies have a 24 hour time clock in which our body works in sync, supposed to be working in sync.

with the sunshine, with light exposure to trigger to different organs what they need to be doing at certain times. And it's so crazy because our big body clock determines our small body clocks. So every organ actually has its own little clock it works off of. Every cell in your body has its own 24 hour time clock in which it works, in which it performs and makes ATP and

Sara Childers (06:41.406)
cellular energy in order to give you actual life. And a few examples of how this works is when you get up in the morning, your T3 and your T4, your thyroid hormones, detect light. So your eyes detect the soft morning sunlight once you have been asleep for a long time.

and the supraplasmic nucleus in your brain tells your thyroid to wake your body up. It's time to go. It's time to get to work. And your thyroid, is your energy storage gland or whatever you could say that it's the engine to your body, your thyroid makes T3 and T4, which naturally gives you energy. And when

We have a time clock that's really off or when our thyroid hormones are really off that can affect that process, but ideally our thyroid hormones will start to give our body energy. We'll start to wake up and once we start to wake up and we get into the mid morning, early afternoon, our digestion is on fire. Our digestive enzymes and our stomach acid is the most active at the beginning of the day. And then we get into the afternoon.

And when we have the most sunlight, so usually around noon or lunchtime, when the UV rays are at their highest, that is when we have the most energy because there is the most light exposure. And as we get into the afternoon, different processes happen, our digestion slows down, and then we start to detect darkness as the sun sets.

And supposed to, this is what's supposed to happen in the body. Our bodies start to produce certain hormones like melatonin to help us sleep. And throughout the entire day, our body and our organs are doing different things, releasing different hormones, detoxing and whatnot. And so with modern culture, with blue light, with screens, with

Sara Childers (09:00.77)
different schedules with a lot of travel, with busyness and changes in time zones and all of the things. We as a society collectively have really messed up our circadian rhythms because since our eyes detect light and circadian rhythms are heavily based off of light exposure with screens and TV and all of the things

We have really confused our body clocks and so many times when I meet with clients, they don't feel good. They feel groggy during the day or they can't wake up and they don't have that energy and they crash in the afternoon. And when we start to really look deeply at their schedule and what they do at night and what they do in the morning and you know, what they're doing throughout the day, if they have any sunlight exposure at all.

I start to see a pattern where the biggest issue for most people is just the fact that their circadian rhythms really stink and they're off kilter and their body clocks are confused therefore their entire body is confused and when we think of such a simple concept like this we don't give it enough value to

actually put it in our minds that this will make a difference for us, but in reality light exposure and having good circadian rhythms can actually make or break our health. And I've seen this with my own health, with my own life, especially as I have started my own business, I work on my own schedule, I get busy and sometimes I have to make protocols at night, sometimes I have to be on my computer late. And I can tell that this

creates a huge shift in my body. And when we're talking about a schedule, when we're talking about shifting our health and how we can use very simple concepts to shift our health, it's so important to remember that consistency and predictability and rhythms really matter for our health.

Sara Childers (11:23.114)
Our body really needs consistency. needs rhythms. It needs predictability because it does not like a sporadic environment. When you are constantly having no routine, no rhythms, and when you are just sporadic with your schedule, your body tends to feel a bit unsafe and confused and it's not going to work optimally.

I think this is so interesting before we kind of get into the nitty-gritty about circadian rhythms. I was actually on a call the other day and it was a course of sorts. It was a continuing education for functional medicine, all about cell health and mitochondria, parasites, mold, all the things, gut health. And one of the physicians mentioned, he was actually a gastroenterologist. He

mentioned that when he works with a client and they talk about circadian rhythms, because he talks about circadian rhythms with all of his gut health clients, he recommends that they use the restroom every morning or at least attempt to, that they create very consistent bowel habits with themselves.

because your body loves consistency so much that you can actually train it to use a restroom at certain times, to be ready to do certain processes at certain times of the day. And you can get so much farther with your health when your body can actually predict your schedule. Because even if you're not incorporating all of these bio hacks and even if you're not eating

just the healthiest, most organic diet. If your body can have consistency, your bowel movements, your gut health, your muscle memory, your cortisol, honestly, because cortisol is a circadian rhythm hormone, it's not just a stress hormone, and it's not just based off of stress, it's based off of your circadian rhythms, your...

Sara Childers (13:33.932)
body is going to be so much more in sync and it's so much easier to make progress in headway when your body has that regular routine. So getting into the nitty gritty about circadian rhythms.

Sara Childers (14:11.576)
circadian rhythms being a 24 hour time clock that our hormones, our cells, our genetics play off of, I think it's important to note that when you don't have good circadian rhythms, there's going to be a lot of things that get off kilter. In my newsletter that I send out on Fridays that always have exclusive extra content from my podcasts in them, I will send out some studies.

and some resources about circadian rhythms if you want to go to my website and sign up for that newsletter. But when we're thinking about circadian rhythms and what they affect if we don't have them on on the right path, if our circadian rhythms are messed up, if our body is confused, that can cause us to have a slower metabolism. Our T3, T4 production with our thyroid

being a little bit off. It can also affect our glucose levels tremendously. Our glucose and our blood sugar is heavily reliant on what we eat, yes, but it is also heavily reliant on our ability to digest and break down and tolerate glucose. And we actually do that better at the beginning of the day than at the end of the day.

We break down sugars and we break down carbs much better at breakfast and lunch than we do dinner. That is why when we talk about circadian rhythms, I think it's so important to touch at least a little bit on intermittent fasting. I see so many clients who come to me and have no progress with their intermittent fasting after doing it for years. And the reason that they have no progress is because

They don't eat breakfast, but they eat lunch and then they eat a huge dinner and that is messing up your digestion because with a correct circadian rhythm with your body clock, you need to work with your body, not against it. If you do intermittent fast, which I don't recommend any woman to intermittent fast unless you are postpartum and not postpartum unless you are

Sara Childers (16:30.136)
postmenopausal, maybe, but even then it really doesn't work well for women. But if you're a man listening to this and you want to intermittent fast, it's way better to eat a big breakfast, a big lunch, maybe a snack and fast at dinner into the next day because in the beginning of your day is where your digestive enzymes and

the liver creates more bile and your stomach acid is more potent and it's releasing more stomach acid and you can break down and tolerate foods better. That's why people who eat late at night have so many digestive issues. get gastric reflux, acid reflux and they don't tolerate things well because they're not really working with their bodies.

Another thing that affects circadian rhythms is brain function and melatonin release. So I kind of feel like these are a little bit related when we are constantly on screens and we're constantly being stimulated with light. That blue light, that bright blue light goes into our eyes and hits our supraplasmic

Nucleus and it tells our body its daytime when it could be 8 or 9 p.m. At night we stop releasing melatonin we stop making melatonin we don't get sleepy and We end up feeling wired but tired and then we end up not sleeping well during the night So when we're constantly exposed to blue light and when we're not turning the lights down When the Sun is going down that confuses our bodies it

our bodies its daytime again and it goes back to doing what it should be doing during the day and it doesn't prep your body for sleep. And this is a vicious cycle because when you go to sleep and you don't sleep well your brain doesn't detox well and your brain desperately needs to detox well. A lot of people don't realize this but in your brain you have so many lymph nodes

Sara Childers (18:49.238)
in your head and your neck and your brain uses so much energy during the day just to think and just to get you through the day that when you go to sleep it detoxes completely and ideally all of these lymph nodes most of your lymph nodes are in your head and neck by the way all of those lymph nodes are filtering out toxins and filtering out you know things that you're

brain has used up like bio materials I guess you could say that your brain has used up and it's getting it out of the body so that your brain can function better but when your circadian rhythms suck that's not happening that is not happening well and that's why you see a lot of people who have poor circadian rhythms and poor sleep have a lot of depression anxiety because

Not only is their gut health off, but so is their brain.

Sara Childers (19:53.088)
And it doesn't just affect your brain detoxification, circadian rhythms don't. If your circadian rhythms are off, it can also affect just your regular detoxification. So there's actually a time during the day when your liver is detoxifying your body and your liver being your main detox organ, you want this to work well because when your liver is not

Packaging up toxins into this little green liquid called bile and then releasing it in the body Those toxins are just staying there getting stuck in the liver and a lot of times they can be a huge reason you have inflammation possibly later on infections possibly things like EBV so Epstein Barr virus feeding on heavy metals that you haven't

Detoxed out of your body and that's a huge precursor to things like endometriosis and PCOS and all of the things and I know I'm going a little bit too far with this, but it really is a super foundational part of your health

Sara Childers (21:10.838)
Another thing I thought was interesting is that your circadian rhythms are influenced by your genetics, but also your circadian rhythms influence your genetics, if this makes any sense. Your circadian rhythms influence your digestion, the way you break things down, your toxic load, and all of those things affect your genes and how your genes are expressed in your body. So if you're somebody who thinks

that you are doomed for your health. Maybe you have a poor family history. Maybe you have that type of mentality where you think, yeah, I'm kind of screwed with my health because my parents had this, my grandparents had that, my great grandparents had that. I want you to take a moment to realize that your genetics don't mean all that much. It really...

depends on your lifestyle because your lifestyle and your nutrition and your toxic load actually are what affect what type of genes are expressed in your body. It's called epigenetics. It's called nutrigenomics, nutrigenetics. It's an entire field of study. It's newer within the last few decades, but it's very well established if that's anything you want to look into.

Sara Childers (22:49.196)
And of course, you know that I have to have a little caveat in this podcast, in this video about Christianity because I'm a Christian and this is a holistic Christian women's health podcast. Wow, what a niche. And when we think about the Bible, when we think about what the Bible talks about with rhythms and consistency in our daily lives,

I think it's so interesting. It doesn't really talk about it directly, but it shows you through Jesus' life, through even people's lives before Jesus, like in the Old Testament, it shows a lot of rhythmic patterns. Jewish people are very rhythmic people. They have a lot of holidays, a lot of sacraments, a lot of things that they do throughout the year to anchor.

themselves and to kind of show what they should be focusing on in that season because as Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything but also even though you know Jesus was a Jew but Christians are not Jewish, Jesus and his disciples did still do a lot of the rhythms that Jewish people observed and they had a lot of their own rhythms and all

I'll try to add some verses that talk about this in the show notes, but a few that I have seen are things like, you know, of course in Genesis when God actually establishes the Sabbath, establishes a rhythm and a balance between work and rest. Even our creator did that. And in Mark one and six, and then Luke.

4, 5, 9, and 21, those chapters, it talks about how regularly Jesus withdrew from his work, from his ministry, from his miracles to rest and pray. And oftentimes he did retreat with his disciples to have a time where they did rest, they prayed, and they just focused on teaching and learning.

Sara Childers (25:07.47)
and not so much on doing. And I think that when we're thinking about our own lives and we're thinking about the balance between our rest and our sleep, it's important to focus on because you can't have a full life that's jam-packed with work all the time. And the only time you let up is when you go to sleep and you don't sleep well because you've been on your computer.

the entire day and then you get on your phone even during the night or watch TV into the night and your body is confused about what state of being you are in because it's constantly in a state of survival and work and not in a state of true rest.

Sara Childers (25:58.998)
And another thing, even going beyond Jesus' ministry in the Bible, going to the early church, talks about and acts how they regularly met and they did observe all the things that Jesus did with his disciples. They broke bread together, they made community, and that requires consistency and rhythms of rest and work.

And when we're talking about circadian rhythms, it sounds like such a daily thing because it is. It's literally based off of every day the sun rises and the sun sets. But I think if you don't have habits set and intentionality with your life, it's going to be very hard to establish that circadian rhythm and to establish a routine that is

fully aligned with the circadian rhythm. Now nobody's perfect everybody gets off track. I love to sleep in every now and then and sometimes if we're around great friends we'll stay up a little bit too late but if you're able to do progress over perfection and kind of come back into your own and to follow your schedule based off the circadian rhythms

that works really well for your health, for your body. Your body will actually thank you.

Sara Childers (28:06.892)
Now let's get into the fun stuff about how can you level up your schedule, how can you level up your self-care in order to actually be in line with your circadian rhythm. So there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's tons of ways you could do this. I'm gonna show you some of the things that I like and then some of the ideas that I like that I may be incorporating sometime soon.

I don't like to do too many things at one time because that gets overwhelming and also we want to create habits that are really realistic for ourselves that we can stick to. So I would just start with one or two of these things and kind of work your way up from there. But the first thing that I think is important to actually work on is your night routine.

And lot of times people are like, my gosh, I need to work on my morning routine. My morning routine is really what's going to get me on track. But that's actually not true. Your night routine is what gets you on track because if you don't sleep well and you end up wanting to sleep late, your morning routine is going to be sabotaged either way.

So you need to focus on the night first so that you can go to sleep at a predictable time, then wake up when you want to in order to get everything done that you need to in the morning. my favorite thing to do is when I finish work, every day I finish work within three o'clock to six p.m. somewhere in between there, every day is different just because I'm self-employed and every day is literally so different.

But once I'm off work, I will start to make dinner. And at this time, I don't really use overhead lighting in general. If I literally could live somewhere where we only have candles or lamps, I think I would honestly thrive. But as the sun sets, whether it's summer or winter, we're kind of slowing down the vibes. We're not...

Sara Childers (30:17.742)
over consuming lately I've been trying to be super intentional about okay I don't always have to have a YouTube video going I'll always have to have a podcast on I can sit in silence and just breathe for a second and we'll make dinner around 630 we'll eat every night and

Something that has been so transformational for me is eating a bigger breakfast and lunch. And we still have a pretty hefty dinner, but I don't eat as much at dinner and that has changed the game for me. I've had acid reflux for most of my life and it's because I've always eaten really big dinners, but in the last year or so, I've really changed that and I don't have nearly any acid reflux anymore.

But we get into the night and I always wear my OcuShield Medical Professional Blue Light Grade glasses that are golden lensed. And you can even get some that are red lenses and I am trying to save up to invest in those and a few other things just because these glasses are, I mean, I don't wear.

prescription glasses, so I don't really know how much glasses cost but I think that these are kind of an investment compared to the cheap blue light glasses you get on Amazon, but I'll tell you what these medical grade like tested clinically tested

Sara Childers (32:01.834)
glasses have changed the game for me and ocky shield actually accepts fha and hsa cards so that you can actually get reimbursed because blue light does cause macular degeneration and when you have too much exposure to blue light it can really damage your retinas and it can really damage your eyes and that is why

optometrists have done these studies and came up with these glasses in order to help with that. I will link these in my newsletter that I put out every single Friday. If you're interested, just join the newsletter. You can do that by getting on my website, then exiting off and there's a pop-up that will come up that will show you how to sign up for my newsletter.

super easy, clicks and you're in. yeah, the OcuShield lights, or the OcuShield glasses have done so much for me because my husband still likes to watch TV and I try not to watch TV with him all the time. I usually have about four different books on my nightstand and I will try to read a book instead of watch TV and

It's different every night based off of what my husband wants to watch because sometimes I do want to watch what he's watching. And it's hard for me to just sit in my room and not go out there with him and spend some quality time. So what I usually do is I'll put on my blue light glasses, I'll turn all the lights off except for maybe a few lamps, really get it as dark as possible and then I will

Try if I am I always turn my brightness down on my phone, but I try not to be on my phone I'll try to read if I can't I will watch TV with my husband with my blue light glasses on and When we go to bed, I try to go to bed within like a decent hour. Usually it's 9 930 if we're feeling froggy, it'll be 10 and Then when it comes to sleep the sleep hygiene is the most important

Sara Childers (34:26.53)
I'm talking 68 degrees Fahrenheit, eye mask if I have one, mouth tape, a sound machine, blackout curtains, it has to be pitch black, a fan if it's not, if the fan AC is not working very well, we'll do a fan, cozy covers.

hate sleeping in shorts, you gotta figure out what you like. You gotta figure out your most comfy, most cozy environment for sleeping. Like for me, it is a big t-shirt, long pants, and cozy socks, with an eye mask, cold, sound machine, mouth tape. And that helps me.

It sounds like a lot and it is, but honestly, we spend half of our lives, a quarter of our lives, excuse me, we spend a third of our lives, a quarter of our lives sleeping. So yeah, it's important and I'm gonna go all out for it. And I think you should too. So that is the start and that helps me to get really good room type of sleep. So when I wake up in the morning, I don't feel...

groggy and I don't feel just like I need to go back to sleep. There's some days I feel that way, but for the most part it's a very good restful sleep. Then I wake up in the morning and from there, you know, we've supported our melatonin production the night before. We've supported our ability to go to sleep and get restful sleep.

Ideally we're waking up in the morning and we're not looking at our phone So I want you to know this because this is important cortisol there when you get into the research about cortisol and about adrenal fatigue and all of the things when it comes to Cortisol which is our most foundational hormone as a woman or as a human in general cortisol and insulin are our most

Sara Childers (36:44.492)
foundational hormones but when you get into the research about cortisol you'll actually learn that cortisol is not just a stress hormone. Cortisol is actually a circadian rhythm hormone and cortisol is highly influenced by our circadian rhythms that's why on the Dutch hormone test you have morning, afternoon, afternoon and night you have four different

times where you take your cortisol because we need to see where it's at. And when you get up in the morning, that's when your cortisol is usually at its highest. So we want to do everything we can to support it not being too high in the morning. So what I like to do is I'll get up. I wish I could get up without an alarm, but I try to set a calming alarm that doesn't just jar me awake and then not get on the phone, skip getting on the phone.

and just go outside and get some natural sunlight. Now if you wake up at the butt crack of dawn and there's no sunlight, maybe you can make yourself a tea, maybe you can really start to replenish your minerals and drink a heavy electrolyte mix. So something you can do is like Dr. Berg's electrolyte mixes or if you have your own, I've made my own tailored

supplement mix with Vicon supplements and I'll have that usually in the morning while I'm trying to get some natural sunlight and slowly wake up and from there when your eyes have that natural sunlight it kind of just tells the rest of your body hey it's 7 a.m. it's 6 30 a.m. it's 6 a.m. whatever

here's what we need to be doing right now. It reinforces that time clock and if you're able to relax in the morning, go for it. But if you're not, think just doing this in some really creative ways is going to be good enough. Like if you just don't want to wear sunglasses when you drive your kids to school so that through the car you can get some natural sunlight.

Sara Childers (39:07.86)
Or if you want to literally spend five seconds outside just looking at the sunrise and letting your eyeballs just really absorb that light, totally fine. There's a lot of people who like to maybe have breakfast outside on their patio if they have one with their kids and that be a way that they get natural sunlight the way your kids are also getting natural sunlight. There are a lot of people who

just do the best that they can and then maybe at lunch or sometime earlier in the day they'll go outside and try to get a lot of sunlight exposure on their skin. So there's a lot of ways you can do this but I would say your morning and your night routine when it comes to circadian rhythms are the most important. But if you're able during the day to get any amount of sunlight

I would definitely do that because we as humans were meant to be outside during the day. We were not created. Our bodies, our biology was not designed to be stuffed in a building all day away from the sun, away from the day. We were not built for that. And so that is why you see so many women

with vitamin D levels that are just so astronomically low because you get vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin D is actually kind of like a circadian rhythm hormone as well because the more sun that there is, the higher the sun is during the day, the more vitamin D that you will get. And if you're never getting outside during the day, then you're not getting enough vitamin D. And this is kind of like...

I don't want to say this is a hopeless tip for health, but it's going to take a really long time for us as a society collectively to figure this out because I have worked a hospital job before. I've worked a nine to five. Like you can't easily get outside during the day unless it's part of your nine to five. So I totally understand where not everybody's able to do this.

Sara Childers (41:35.938)
But if you even have five to 10 minutes, if you even just have a lunch break, go outside during the day and get that vitamin D because you know what? When you get vitamin D, it actually helps with melatonin production and it actually helps with other hormone production so that your circadian rhythms work better, you sleep better, and you're more balanced. I don't know about you, but a summer day...

where you're outside, maybe swimming in the pool, at the beach, or at the lake, and you're just getting so many minerals from whatever water you're in. Maybe you're at the beach. Maybe you're getting all these minerals from the sand and the ocean, and you're hydrating well, and you're also getting all this vitamin D from the sun, and you go in in the afternoon, you're just so tired and sleepy, I guess is a better word. You're just so sleepy.

when the night comes and you just sleep like a baby and you just feel so refreshed after a beach vacation because you were able to get in the ocean and you were able to ground and you were able to see the sunlight and get some vitamin D and that is why people feel so good when they go on a beach vacation and it's honestly so good for your health and why people who live at the beach honestly are probably a little bit healthier than

us who are landlocked. It's not because we're getting away from our toxic 9 to 5, although that might be it. It's because you're going and you're actually living a little bit more like a human was designed to live. You're actually getting sunlight. You're actually enjoying yourself. You're actually, you know, being in nature. And you're getting all of these things just through your skin and your

body is thanking you for it. So something to think about and it's hard to get in sunlight. No matter what you do. Even I'm a self-employed person and it's hard for me to get sunlight because I am always working, I'm always busy with something and it's not an easy balance.

Sara Childers (43:59.488)
Another thing you can do is I did this when I first started kind of looking into circadian rhythms, but there's actually an app. I think it's called circadian and it's a circadian rhythm app that is free and you can download it and it will track your location and tell you what to do when. So it will recommend a time for you to wake up. It'll recommend a time and send you a notification of like

birds chirping, it's very relaxing, but it'll send you a notification, birds will chirp, and it'll say, time to go outside, time to go outside, time to get up and look at the sunset or look at the sunrise or just be outside during the day. It gives you pinpoints during the day and it tells you what to do so that you can actually sync up your circadian rhythms and I highly recommend the link to that is also going to be on my newsletter.

and then blue light blockers that and red light. So since we're talking about light and light exposure, red light therapy is absolutely everywhere right now. But I think it's important to note that red light, not red light therapy, but any sort of red light is actually going to be supportive of your circadian rhythm. So I know I talked about earlier how screens like phone screens, TVs, laptops, iPads,

produce blue light which messes up our circadian rhythms. So let's say you're a nursing mother and you want your circadian rhythms to be in sync because you want your baby to follow circadian rhythms because they do and you want your milk to have melatonin in it so your baby will sleep better at night because that's actually what happens when women who are postpartum have regular circadian rhythms.

that will actually come out in their milk supply and their babies will get that natural melatonin from mom's breast milk and they'll sleep better. And so if you are someone who thinks, my, my sleep patterns are really off and if I could just catch up and you know, get some natural production of melatonin going, maybe my baby would sleep better. That might be something to try, but

Sara Childers (46:28.878)
When you're a nursing mom and you're trying to sync up your circadian rhythms or if you're somebody who gets up a lot during the night, I have a few elderly clients who get up a lot during the night to go to the restroom or whatnot, or if you want to have a reading light on but you want to be really sleepy before you go to bed and you don't want it to be a regular light, do a red light, do a red bulb.

There's a lot of like the hatch has a red light on it that you can use as a light to go to the restroom or to feed your baby or whatever but you can also just go to Lowe's or your local hardware store and get a red bulb and put them in your bedside table like I have sconces in my bedside table you could do a sconce lamp combo for your bedside tables I see a lot of

interior designers doing this anyways. It looks really posh. It looks really good and one light is for regular light. The lamp is regular warm light that gives off good lighting in the bedroom just during the day or whenever. But then if you have a reading light or a sconce you could put maybe like a red light in it so that when you're reading or when it's nighttime and you really want to sync up your circadian rhythms

you have that red light on and I have a plan whether my husband likes it or not in our new house to actually make our bedside lamps red and to put a few red lights in certain lamps so that at night our whole house is either candle lit because candles and fire actually give off that same hue and that same red light that red bulbs do.

that make us sleepy, help us to make melatonin, that calm us down and make us just feel a lot better. Humans actually watching fire like we were meant to, know, caveman theory. You you have a fire. Traditionally, that's how people saw things at night. That's how they were able to see at night is they had a fire that they were around. Looking at a fire gives off that light that actually helps your circadian rhythm.

Sara Childers (48:51.412)
it actually helps to, it gives off these certain waves that calm your brain down. And so in my mind, I'm thinking maybe make our home red light. I love to get an oil lamp. I've heard there's ways that you can make olive oil lamps with a rag or a rope inside of the jar so that if it falls over, it doesn't burn your house down.

but and the oil doesn't spread. But I think something like controlled oil lamps or just candles like beeswax candles, something that's non-toxic could be a great way to incorporate light into your home without messing up your circadian rhythms. And there's so many people now on the internet.

like a lot of homestead, holistic, crunchy families who are kind of having this challenge or doing this challenge of the sundown challenge, which is basically where when the sun goes down, everything's turned off, it's quiet, it's soft red light or candlelight, and you're just doing very soothing life-giving activities like

Reading or a craft something to soothe your mind and to calm your body down so that you can actually sleep well And it doesn't it not only sounds super cozy But it's also super practical for our design as humans to just sync up very well to the circadian rhythms Another thing you could do is actually putting your phone in a box if you are somebody that you feel like you're addicted to your phone

and you don't feel like you can get off of it right before bed. Maybe you're a doom scroller, TikTok person, whatever. There's actually like boxes that have timers on them where you can lock your phone up for a certain amount of time and then the box will unlock after that set time is gone and you would be able to get your phone out.

Sara Childers (51:10.03)
And I think that could be a a great way to To actually Help with the circadian rhythms you can also put your phone and I always have my phone on this but you can put your phone on Night mode or there's a certain mode where it does lower the blue light and it gives it more of a golden hue You really can't tell after a while, but it makes a difference

And then I have also gotten on my phone and then I want to get on my laptop. There are actually screen protectors sold by places like OcuShield that have blue light blockers that have created screen protectors for your phones and devices that block out blue light as well. something that I found on the settings in my TV the other day was turning down the brightness so that

when it's nighttime and you're watching TV, your TV isn't so bright that it's literally just blaring in your face because if you're married to a man, anything like my husband or my father or any of the men in my life, they like their screens large. We have at least like a 50 inch or 60 inch or 72 inch TV. There are no small TVs around and when

something is on especially commercials when commercials come on it's just brighter and louder because it's trying to get your attention and it is just so in your face and it messes up the circadian rhythm so bad I can feel it and it's hard it's hard to get back on track with this and it's very hard if you have a significant other or whoever you live with isn't exactly on board with this but what I would encourage anybody to do and

ever making any sort of health change is to start small, just start with a few things, talk about it as if you're doing this alone and it really doesn't matter what the other person does and just start doing these things on your own and start to see improvements and whoever you're around will see that you're excited about this change, will see that you're making improvements and they will want to mirror you and follow suit.

Sara Childers (53:33.46)
and usually that's how things progress and get better. Now not every situation is like this, but that's where I would start. But yeah, so circadian rhythms, super important, super imperative, make or break. You will never get exactly to where you want to be with your health until you have these under control.

If you found this helpful, I would love to know, leave a review and a comment and like this show or this video, if you will, and sign up at sarahchildersnutrition.com for my newsletter that's gonna come out this Friday about all things circadian rhythm. And I will see you in the next one. Bye.