Our body clocks - scientifically known as ‘circadian rhythms’ - are slightly longer than 24.0 hrs.

So tonight, your body clock might say that you should fall asleep at 10:00 PM.

If you don’t do the right things tomorrow, then on average, your body clock will delay by 11 minutes (ie, fall asleep at 10:11 PM).

SFW I hear you say …

Well, keep that up, and by this time next week, your body clock will delay 11 min/day for the next 7 days.

So this time next week, your body clock will say that you will fall asleep at 11:17 PM. In a fortnight it will say 12:34 AM.

SFW I hear you say … Well - it gets worse!

If you don’t do the right things for a couple of weeks, then your body clock will delay by more than 11 min/day. Don’t believe me?

Well the graph below is an example of what happens when you put a healthy good sleeping person in a sleep laboratory for a month - and ask them to go to sleep whenever they feel like, and wake-up whenever they feel like it.

There’s a gradual delay of their body clock in the first couple of weeks, and then after that there’s an incredible momentum that builds - and their delay each day kicks into ludicrous speed!

Lockdowns and Sleep

Being in lockdown is a bit like being one of these people in a sleep lab for a month. One of the main differences is that people in these sleep labs never know what the time is (or even day), and they never go outside.

The data coming out now shows people’s sleep has delayed. All around the world.

Whether you’re an adult (Lee et al., 2021), teenager or child (Bruni et al., 2021) - even our own research has found that babies are experiencing ‘social jetlag’ for the first time in history (Kahn et al., 2021).

This is something we predicted back in April 2020 - in our 2-part video explaining the potential problems and solutions for sleep difficulties due to self-isolation.

We were able to predict this because of our knowledge of various sleep research studies, as well as our years of clinical experience.

So today I’m going to focus on one study I love, that was published many years ago …

One Way To Get A Teenager To Like You

During her PhD, Dr Stephanie Crowley invited a group of teenagers into the sleep lab at Brown University (headed by teen sleep guru - Prof Mary Carskadon).

This sleep lab study wasn’t going to keep teenagers in their lab for a month - but instead, just one weekend.

And Stephanie asked the teenagers to do something they loved.

To sleep-in on 2 weekend mornings.

Before they did this, Stephanie measured the timing of their body clock on the Friday night.

And after their sleep-ins on the weekend, Stephanie measured the timing of their body clock again.

What did she find?

On average, teenagers delayed their body clock by 45 min.

That’s a lot quicker than the delay found in earlier studies when people stayed in the sleep lab for a month.

All because they slept in on the weekend …

Chalk and Cheese

In the COVID and Insomnia Part 1 video I speak about Art Speilman’s model of insomnia, and describe the first factor in developing insomnia is known as a Pre-disposing Factor.

Pre-disposing Factors are something that we’re born with.

If you have your own kids - or you have brothers and/or sisters - you’ll see a lot of differences between them.

And sometimes those differences can be whether someone is born a Niteowl or not.

The thing I love most about Dr Stephanie Crowley’s study was the differences between the different teenagers in her ‘weekend sleep-in’ study.

Whilst the group on average delayed by 45 minutes, one teenager’s body clock only delayed by 3 minutes.

At the other extreme, one teenager’s body clock delayed by 90 minutes!

And none of these teenagers were Niteowls …

Conclusion?

As awesome as Stephanie’s study was, it was just a 1st step. She included healthy good-sleeping teenagers in her study.

What hasn’t been done yet - and I would love to do this - is to invite a group of Niteowls into our sleep lab, and allow them to sleep-in for 2 weekend mornings.

My prediction is that they would delay much more than the teens in Steph’s study.

At a sleep conference held in Prague, Prof James Horne said that ‘sleeping-in’ was one of the highest-ranked pleasurable activities.

But if you’re a Niteowl, you probably need to be denied this pleasure.

Take for example this 17-year old teenager who I’ve been treating. He was falling asleep at ~5:00 AM …

I shifted his body clock, so that he began sleeping at 10:30 PM - after which comes the ‘stabilisation phase’ - where we ensure he doesn’t drift again and start falling asleep in the wee hours of the morning.

It may be hard to detect, but in his sleep diary below, you can see that he is starting to fall asleep slightly later on Monday and Tuesday night.

But look what he did on the weekend.

He sought the pleasure of a little sleep-in. And as a consequence, I suspect he began delaying his circadian rhythm.

And so we start treatment again. If we don’t, he will be COVID-sleeping again …

• Prof MG

Thank You!

Each week, I’m so humbled by all the positive feedback about what we’re doing at WINK - especially opening our first WINK Sleep Conference up to so many people who don’t usually get to go to these events.

So I’m going to open the doors even wider, by giving all of our WINK Members a free ticket to the next WINK Sleep Conference (to be held in January 2022).

This is a free ticket to our existing Members - and - any new Members that sign up in the month of August.

And understand that if you invite a new member after sign-up, that you get that month’s membership free.

Our 2022 WINK Sleep Conference will cover the psychology of sleep apnea, where you’ll hear about:

• how many people develop both insomnia and sleep apnea (I’m guessing those of you who work with people’s sleep problems don’t realise some of your clients may have sleep apnea? - see dot point 4 below);

• what Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) can do for people with sleep apnea and insomnia;

• what motivating people with sleep apnea does for their sleep and performance

• how I discovered the co-morbidity of insomnia and sleep apnea when one of my first clients had a car accident (a thin female in her 40s).

We’re going to announce more speakers in the month of August.

So again - Thank You !