[00:00:05] Aimee Prasek, PhD: Hey everyone, Aimee here, popping in for this little intro before we roll into this encore Episode. This one really takes us back to where we started with Recreation — our Element — the idea that recreation is about honoring rhythm and not fighting it. So in this Episode, Henry and I go through these types of biological rhythms: the short ultradian cycles that affect our focus throughout the day, our 24-hour circadian rhythms, and those longer infradian rhythms that take us through cycles and seasons. It's a great one for understanding why rest and recreation aren't optional extras; they're actually built into our biology. I think it's a very fitting way to close our month of recreation, so enjoy.
[00:01:05] Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons. Welcome to Joy Lab.
[00:01:09] Aimee (2): And I'm Aimee Prasek.
[00:01:11] Henry: So the Element for this Episode is Resilience. And we're in our Roots of Resilience Series, working on that third Root, which is "aligning with nature." I think this is my favorite. It's also the one that I think we can most easily ignore. So this is about bio-rhythms, about aligning ourselves with the cycles of nature, it would be hard to overstate how important this is to mental health.
If you look at the natural world, you'll see cycles are everywhere. You know, the sun and the moon, the tides, the obvious things, the weather, seasons of the year, and the seasons of a life even. All of these things are built on rhythms. Now, plants and animals just fall in line with these cycles completely naturally. They don't have a choice, but we do. And we often choose to ignore them. Or even to fight against them. So we can pull all-nighters. We can go south in the winter. And I'm definitely not suggesting we shouldn't do that. We can make ourselves look younger, we can stay up later. We can push through, given the extra effort, even though we probably should stop and rest.
So we don't let nature set limits on us. And I totally get that. But it does come at a cost. Now what we don't see so obviously is how these cycles are also going on inside our bodies. Our hormones, energy, focus; even our moods are clearly, directly affected by these rhythms. One way of looking at depression, in fact, is that it's a problem with our internal timing, where we've gotten out of sync with our bio-rhythms.
[00:03:21] Aimee: I think that's such a fascinating way to look at depression. Just another angle to consider. This really is a booming field of study, often called chronobiology or body-clock research. But as you are alluding here, Henry, when it comes to our physical and mental health, these cycles really matter. For example, seasonal depression or SAD is something we probably all have some familiarity with. Turn my camera to look at my SAD light right next to me that I turn on every morning. Very helpful. Our moods change with some predictability, and this relates to the seasonal shifts. This is the alignment we're exploring in this episode.
So we're going to break down our conversation into three rhythms. We've got ultradian rhythms, which are cycles less than 24 hours. Circadian rhythms, which are these 24 hour cycles and infradian rhythms, which are cycles more than 24 hours, and generally less than one year. So Henry, do you want to talk about ultradian rhythms and how they relate to our mental health?
[00:04:28] Henry: Sure. So I think this might be the easiest of these bio rhythms to overlook. So think about your typical workday. Are you really able to stay focused and productive for eight to 10 hours a day? You might think so, but I doubt it. We have become so tied to clock time that we tend to ignore these micro rhythms that are happening in our, in our bodies.
Some years ago I read a, book called The 20 Minute Break, and it was all focused on these ultradian rhythms. And talked about how most of us just push right through them. So this book was neuroscience-based and it was focused on our ability to stay focused, our energy, our productivity. And the gist of it is that we are really built to be able to sustain kind of a concentrated focus for only about 60 to maybe 75 minutes, 90 minutes tops. And then we fade, and our productivity just drops and it can drop sort of off a cliff if we push it too far.
[00:05:45] Aimee: Yeah.
Yeah
[00:05:45] Henry: So, we might feel that we need to get more done, or it's not lunchtime yet, or we just work right through our lunch and we just keep going, you know? And ignore the fact that we are starting to get spacey and maybe even starting to make mistakes. Or, you know, the typical thing is we'll turn to sugar or caffeine to get a quick artificial boost.
I even know a lot of people who experiment with what are called nootropics, um, which are different substances that are, are supposed to kind of supercharge our brain. You know, get us, make us smarter, keep us focused longer. But what our bodies are trying to tell us is that we should just take a break.
Maybe for 15, 20 minutes, sometimes longer, and we should rest or we should move our bodies or get some kind of a healthy snack that isn't mostly sugar or do a brief meditation or even a, a chat with a friend. But, but something to kind of give us a chance to get our brain back online.
So I have in, in my own work-life, I've started to think about managing my energy rather than managing my time, you know, which is kind of what we're trained to do.
And I think of this even as, as kind of a mindfulness practice because you have to notice when you're starting to fade, if you push through it, you're likely to crash and it might take longer and be kind of hard to get your focus back. But if you can notice it early on and you can honor what your body needs, then maybe just that short break is a, is gonna be enough to get you back on track and keep your focus and even your mood at a healthier level.
[00:07:38] Aimee: I love that cue to manage energy instead of time. and that it can be a mindfulness practice and employers would do well to tune into this if they actually want productivity. There's so much good research here. Give folks enough breaks so they can focus, better productivity. Pretty simple. I do wanna hit on a study here, from Dr. Anders Erickson and colleagues. So, Dr. Erickson was an expert in human performance and understanding folks who really excel at what they do. And in this classic article, he was looking at violinists and how they practiced. And the findings really support what we're talking about here with ultradian rhythms. So the ones that became professional soloists, practiced three and a half hours a day on average. And typically in three separate sessions of 60 to 90 minutes each, right?
So, the good, but not great, performers practiced about an hour and a half a day, typically with no rest, they just went straight through. So the excellent violinists clearly practiced more, but they had a strategy that offered them breaks. And on top of that, the excellent ones napped more frequently and averaged a full one hour more of sleep per night.
You are, you are talking to me, Aimee!
I know it was, I mean, and this, he's done great studies with other top performers, this was not, you know, just violinists. This goes across genres and activities. And I think one interpretation of how these folks excelled in their craft is that they tended to their rhythms more and in such a way that actually allowed them to practice more.
It's not that they just fought through it and practiced more, it's that they, uh, created the, the context, the situation, the support so that they could, right. They were more fresh for practice. They gave themselves breaks, they slept more. And this isn't evidence to say, as I said, that we need to pick one thing.
We don't need to be violinists and be an expert at it and practice like this. I think the more powerful message is that we can be more present and engaged in our daily activities and more in tune with ourselves when we follow these kinds of hourly rhythms and they'll feed us so that we can continue.
So, um, nice transition here. Let's go to circadian rhythms because I did just touch on sleep and that's a big one here. And like this violinist study, other studies, looking at average sleep for high achievers, has found that a key part of their success seems to be that they sleep more than the average American, which is about six and a half hours per night.
So let's compare that with the suggested sleep time for the average adult human; which is seven to nine hours. There is an issue right there from the start for circadian rhythms.
[00:10:36] Henry: Hmm. I like to think about being above average simply by sleeping more. That's a, that's a great way.
[00:10:44] Aimee: Right! Wanna be better? Take a nap! Sleep.
[00:10:47] Henry: So I do see sleep as the linchpin for good mental health. Sleep is the most obvious of these circadian rhythms, and I think sleep might be, honestly, the best mood stabilizer available to us. You know, the research on this is not ambiguous at all.
People who have depression and also have problems sleeping, if they can get their sleep improved, they have just doubled their chances of recovering just by that one change. On the flip side, people who don't yet have depression, but do develop sleep problems, their risk of becoming depressed has just doubled.
I don't know of anything else that has such a big impact on preventing depression.
[00:11:41] Aimee: Yeah.
[00:11:42] Henry: So there is another less obvious aspect of circadian rhythm, and that involves our hormones. And I want to talk for a minute, particularly about the stress hormones, but really, it's not just cortisol. All of our hormones, by and large, tend to fluctuate normally throughout the day.
So cortisol, the stress hormone, we probably hear the most about, it is normal for it to go up and down, to fluctuate over the course of a 24 hour period. When we're really healthy and well-balanced, by and large, cortisol will reach its lowest point kind of early during our sleep and, and this is when we sleep at the deepest stages.
And then from probably somewhere around three in the morning or four in the morning, it starts to go up a little bit and one of the factors that probably helps to wake us up, let's say around six or seven in the morning if we're typical sleepers, and then it just keeps rising over the course of the morning when a lot of us are at our most productive, or at least our most mentally focused.
Then after lunch, uh, cortisol takes a little dip downward, you know, which for a lot of us might be a good time to take a little rest or a nap, or go for a walk, and then it starts to go up again by mid-afternoon. And cortisol levels then, after roughly 5:00, 6:00 PM they just are decreasing and decreasing and they keep, they help us unwind and, and get ready eventually to fall asleep.
So this whole system is called the HPA axis, which means hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal. And this has a ton to do with mood. So this is what I was referring to earlier. Depression can happen when this system gets out of sync, out of balance. In a sense, the adrenals stop listening to the signals from the brain, and then this, this normal, up and down rhythm of cortisol is disrupted.
[00:13:57] Aimee: Maybe other folks caught that three to 4:00 AM little start to surge in cortisol. I'm just thinking, you know, when I'm stressed, what time do I wake up? In the middle of the night, it's three o'clock. That witching hour when cortisol starts to surge and maybe it's got the gas pedal.
[00:14:16] Henry: Yeah.
[00:14:17] Aimee: Do you see that a lot in your....
[00:14:18] Henry: Oh my gosh. I, I hear that all the time. And you know, for some people, like, when they're really going through a, a stressful stretch of time, it's, it's almost like they could set their clock to it. They wake up at a almost exactly the same time, every night in the middle of the night.
[00:14:36] Aimee: Yeah. Sort of that body clock is, is shifted a bit. Right?
[00:14:41] Henry: Good point.
[00:14:42] Aimee: That isn't supporting
[00:14:45] Henry: Right.
[00:14:46] Aimee: Yeah, so I think it's really interesting too to think about mood issues, arising or worsening because we're battling our body's natural cycles. There is just so much friction, energy, being used to try and bypass all of it uh, and to get back in with this circadian rhythm. To maybe stop waking up at 3:30 AM, on the dot, every morning. I think it can be really helpful to notice the rhythms around us. I'll just start with like dogs, for instance, if you have a dog or a cat. But I think cats are condescending, so I like to focus on dogs. if you, sorry cat folks.
[00:15:27] Henry: We just lost, just lost half of our listeners!
[00:15:31] Aimee: I'm just scared of cats and allergic to 'em. Anyway, if you have a pet, even a sweet cat, um, they probably know their mealtimes, to the second, it's amazing, right? And the birds chirping at the same hour in June, right outside your window. For us, it's 5:45 AM at our house. Our chickens go into their coop every night at like 7:45 PM in July, a little later cause the sun is out. The way flowers open and close at particular times... and actually for any of you gardeners or just those who wanna try something new this spring, you can make a flower clock and keep time to the half hour from dawn to dusk with flowers simply based on when they open or close.
[00:16:18] Henry: Really?!
[00:16:19] Aimee: So cool. I wanna do this. Uh, the famous version of this is, uh, Linnaeus' Flower Clock, and there's also a poem from Andrew Marvel, who was a late 16th century poet that may have done this before Linnaeus. I wanna read this poem. I think it's perfect. It's, it's the poetics of circadian rhythm right here.
" How well the skillful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?
[00:17:03] Henry: Wow,
[00:17:04] Aimee: Manage energy, not time. I love that. So that's one strategy, maybe not the flower thing, it's kind of a whole big thing. But try it if you can let me know how it goes. Um, but tapping into your circadian rhythm with the rhythms around you, head outside, see what else is cycling. Uh, what other suggestions do you have, Henry?
[00:17:24] Henry: Well, here's something that relates directly to what you just talked about, Aimee, and that is how we interact with light.
So I happen to think that our adoption of artificial light, which you know, obviously lets us override the signals from nature, is probably one of the reasons why we have seen mental health problems increase pretty steadily over the last century.
I'm not saying go back to not having electric lights, but, but it just really does allow us to kind of, plow through, uh, nature's rhythms. So we can take a lesson from nature here, and this is really not hard to do. We can actually use technology to make this easier. So, get bright light exposure early in the morning, preferably in the first hour or two after you wake up. And then in the evening, particularly in the winter, keep your lights very, very dim around you.
Now, this is easier to do in the summer cuz you can get outside and get that bright light exposure. In the winter, you do have to trick your brain, essentially, by using artificial lights. But it's really easy to do. Like a dawn simulator or a bright light device that you use early, first thing in the morning.
A lot of people actually benefit by doing it again in the late afternoon, around five o'clock, roughly, just for about 15 minutes because it might help them help to set their sleep time at the right time. But then in the late evening, be super careful about how many lights you have on in your house.
So I want to go back briefly to what I was saying earlier about how cortisol fluctuates over the course of the day. Remember, that's normal. It's supposed to happen and it does a lot of good things for us. But when we are under a lot of stress, it pushes that whole system into overdrive. And if you were to measure your cortisol levels throughout the day, and there are some tests that do this, they have four different testing points through the day,
you can see that maybe it's gotten too high, throughout the day all the time, or maybe just at night like we were talking about earlier and it disrupts your sleep. You know when you wake up at that three or four hour in the morning and you just, your brain starts to ruminate, right?
So that's a really good sign that your stress hormones are elevated.
Now, some of us who are really resilient, you know, we can go through this a long time before things start to break down. If it does go on long enough and we don't address this, our adrenal glands can really become overtaxed and that can create a condition called adrenal fatigue, which is a little bit controversial, but I believe in it cuz I see, I see this happen to patients from time to time. And I think of it as a state of depletion.
So if your adrenal glands are tired out, so is the rest of you. Sometimes that sense of fatigue is profound. I think it's one of the thing, the things that might happen to some people, even with, long covid. But, but this, this long term outcome of stress, it is really something to avoid, if at all possible, cuz it can be a little bit tough to, to recover from or take a while.
So the best thing to do is to look for early signs and then address your stress as soon as you can. And then really importantly, to protect your sleep. Because if you continue sleeping well that kind of, um, teases or allows your stress system to fall into place and give your adrenals a chance to recover.
[00:21:22] Aimee: Hmm. Sleep really is so powerful.
So our last rhythm to hit is infradian rhythms. So these are the cycles that occur more than 24 hours apart. These cycles may not seem so obvious either, but when we become aware of them and the symptoms or experiences that surround them, then you can see how powerful they are.
Here are a few infradian rhythms that I think are important to note when we're talking about our mental health: menstruation and seasonal affective disorder. These are big topics as they relate to mental health, but let's just talk about them for a moment here as they relate relate to tuning into our infradian rhythms. Because just the awareness of these cycles can be enlightening.
So what I think is enlightening here is that, for example, menstruation brings with it changes in mood and energy, needs for sleep, uh, and other symptoms that can be identified and predicted; because it's part of this sophisticated, elegant cycle, maybe in concert with some of the kind of lunar cycles, but the evidence is not clear on that. Possibly, because we don't really live in sync with nature compared to our ancestors, as you were sort of hinting at earlier, Henry.
Uh, But whatever the relationship here is with the natural world, I think it can be really helpful for women to give a bit more attention to the symptoms that show up around menstruation. Maybe document them in a journal or an APP. It provides an awareness practice that can be really comforting. For example, when you feel that dark cloud of depression or exhaustion pile on you, seemingly out of nowhere, you can look back at your app or journal and see, oh yeah, this happened last month at nearly the same time. Easy to forget, powerful to realize. Attributing some cause to those symptoms can feel really good. I think that can help release some of the judgment about those symptoms that might come along. Because we can acknowledge that they are part of this infradian rhythm working in good order within us, and then we can do what we need to do to care for ourselves.
[00:23:40] Henry: Yeah, I think uh, I think a lot of mood problems for women can be tied to their hormones and, you know, I'm not personally expert in treating this, but I've seen a lot of my patients feel much better when it gets addressed. So if this is an issue for any of our listeners, I really think it is important to work with someone who has got a lot of experience with treating more subtle hormone imbalances, cuz it really makes a difference if you're, if you're able to, get them, your hormones, stabilized with, particularly with more natural, um, kind of hormones.
So seasonal depression is another big topic, and so I'm just gonna say a couple of things about it right now.
So the root cause of winter depression, I think, is the change in circadian rhythm. The cold, crappy weather doesn't help, and we also do tend to be less active and probably don't eat quite as well in the winter, but it is basically the short days that mess up our bio rhythms and probably contribute to all of these problems.
So here's my short course on how to deal with this, and that is to try to convince your body that it's not the middle of the winter. So you use light exposure to make it seem like the days are longer than they actually are. So at the early part and the late part of the day. You try to eat fresh light foods that are kind of similar to what you might eat in the middle of summer. And you keep your body moving.
[00:25:16] Aimee: So, this is our last of the more body-focused roots of resilience. And next episode, we'll talk a bit more about how resilience and hope come together to nourish our body, mind, and spirit.
To close our time, there's perhaps no better insight on aligning with nature than the concise wisdom from Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu. Here it is:
"Nature does not hurry. Yet everything is accomplished."
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