Rhonda: People that are exposed to bright light in the evening, so, you know, you're working late or you're, you know, watching television, and that's going to trick your brain and think, "Okay, reset." Is that kind of what's happening?

Satchin: Yeah, so what is happening is in the evening when we have that extended period of light, it's sending a wrong signal to the brain saying this might be part of the day and that also doesn't allow melatonin level to build up so we have trouble going to sleep. And ultimately, we go to sleep and we wake up either sleepy or we wake up very late into the day. And in the late in the day, then our body is getting a signal, "Oh, this might be the morning." But at the same time, these days we spend more than 90% of our time indoors and many of the indoor environments have less than 1000 lux of light and many places have actually less than 200 or 100 lux of light.

So that means even though we wake up, we don't get that very bright light that we are designed to get in the morning. So our body gets confused completely when it's day or when it's night. Although we kind of can work our way through, our body is not completely compliant or completely is figuring out when it's day or night. So that's why all the circadian rhythm, all these rhythms and gene expression in different organs are completely desynchronized. You can imagine a car running with a bad timing belt and the spark plugs sparking at wrong time, so you can't run that car too long. So that's what happens in our body.

Rhonda: Right. I know for myself I...there's a few things, there's a couple of things that I, changes that I've made to my lifestyle within the last year or so that have made a huge difference. And that is one, I now live in a place that is not a dungeon.

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: So I used to have, you know, windows that were blocked by other buildings and it was not facing, you know, the west side. I mean, just no light was coming in.

Rhonda: And that really did affect my mood. Like, even though I was eating well, exercise, all these things, you know, that helped, but I definitely felt that my mood was affected by that. So I moved and now have bright light exposure first thing in the morning which has really helped my circadian rhythm in addition, so...but also, I don't get exposed to bright or blue light in the evening. So I have these lights, I don't know if you're familiar with them, they're Philips Hue.

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: And so they're, you can program these lights to switch off blue light and only have red light.They do other colors as well than red light.

Satchin: Yeah, yeah.

Rhonda: And so I have it now where...well, now that it's summertime, I used to have it programmed with the sunset, but now that the sun's setting later, it gets too dark in my place, so about 5:30 the red lights come on.

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: And then I have an app on my phone...I'm sorry on my computer called F.lux...

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: ...which then blocks the, it filters the blue light...

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: ...and it corresponds to the sunset...

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: ...or the time zone that I'm in..

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: ... or that anyone's in. So those are some of the things that I've done, and I now am very much able to go to…you know, about 10:00 at night, 10 p.m., I'm, I'm sleepy, I, you know, I brush my teeth, it's time for bed, and I wake up now probably around 7:30, 8:00. That's it. So I get a nice, a good amount of sleep...

satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: ...but it's pretty regular and routine.

Satchin: Yeah.

Rhonda: So those are some little lifestyle changes that I've made to my life that have made a big difference.