Most of us go to bed well after the Sun does, and this mismatch has physical and mental health impacts. Research suggests that sleeping outside can help counter this by giving us a better chance of staying in tune with the Sun and Moon; scientists have found that spending a weekend camping can reset our circadian clock so that it better aligns with the world outside. For most of us, that means shifting our sleep a bit earlier – and avoiding the health issues associated with sleeping late, including cardiovascular disease and depression.
Fifteen years ago, Kenneth Wright, lead author of the study and director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US, set out to explore how camping impacts sleep as a proxy for understanding our circadian clocks better.
Wright wanted to understand just how out of step our circadian rhythms – the natural sleep-wake cycle that repeats every 24 hours – are today with the natural world that humans evolved in. He decided to take a small group of people on a weeklong summer camping trip in the Rocky Mountains to immerse them in the natural cycles of day and night. This meant no torches or phones, and exposure to four times more natural daylight than they usually experienced during the day.
READ MORE ON THE NEXT PAGE..
