Have you ever wondered why human beings sleep at night? Did someone just make
the decision one day: “Okay Guys! From now on we’re all going to go to sleep when
the big light in the sky turns off!”

That could possibly be it! But there’s actually a system inside of us that uses light
and darkness to control certain sleep hormone levels Melatonin is a hormone synthesized in the pineal gland and, to a lesser extent, in the retina. Melatonin is responsible for putting you to sleep and restoring physical energy while we sleep. If your melatonin levels are high, you will experience feelings
of drowsiness, loss of energy, etc.

Melatonin is released when we’re exposed to darkness. The instant sunlight stops
entering our eyes, our melatonin hormone level begins to rise. Your melatonin levels
are EXTREMELY dependant on the amount of natural sunlight that enters your eyes
during the day!

Higher exposure to sunlight delays the body temperature drop, and lets you stay
awake and alert longer. Poor exposure to sunlight will promote a quick temperature
drop and make you feel sleepy, tired, and out of balance. You will most likely
experience the pressure to sleep very early in the day, or the pressure to sleep will
be very minimal which might cause insomnia and poor quality sleep.
Because melatonin is released when we’re exposed to darkness, it is also
sometimes called the vampire hormone.
We’ll explore exactly how important sunlight is in a later part of this book. However
it’s important to understand that getting proper sunlight isn’t an “optional” part of this
program, it’s a MUST, as it is the main way our body adjusts our body temperature
rhythm.

Activity Level

The amount of movement and cardiovascular exercise you get during the night has a
huge impact on your body temperature rhythm. Any movement or exercise promotes
a quick rise in temperature which can be very beneficial to the sleep system.
Exercise creates a higher “peak” point of body temperature during the day, which will
increase your energy levels far beyond anything else. Exercise delays the body

temperature drop at the end of the day, allowing you to stay awake and alert longer.
Finally, exercise will make the drop of body temperature at the end of the day more
drastic and allow your body temperature to stay lower for a longer amount of time;
this will promote much deeper sleep.

Prior Wakefulness

Obviously the amount of time you’re awake has a direct effect on all three factors
above. Your activity levels contribute a lot to your temperature variations. Also, the
longer you’re awake obviously means you get more potential for sunlight entry into
your eyes, which has a direct effect on your melatonin level.

If you’re currently sleeping 8 or 9 hours and you feel tired during the day this could
actually be a sign that you need LESS sleep. You’re sleeping to much and you need
to increase your prior wakefulness to create deeper sleep and a more balanced body
temperature rhythm.

The four factors up above control how long you sleep, and how deep your
sleep is. To summarize, the factors that affect your sleep the most.

1) The body temperature rhythm.
2) Natural sunlight entering your eyes, as it has a direct effect on your melatonin
levels.
Understanding how the body temperature rhythm affects your sleep is the key to
optimizing your sleep. The body temperature rhythm is really what makes the sleep
clock a… “Clock”.

Usually, your body temperature follows the same pattern regardless of when you go
to sleep. For instance, if you routinely get up at 8 am every day, this means your
body temperature begins to rise at 8 am. If you feel drowsy for the next 3 hours, this
means your body temperature is slowly rising during this time, and hasn’t reached it’s
peak point. For most people the optimum peak point of body temperature is at
around 6 PM to 7 PM, this is when we are naturally most active and have the most
energy. Study the previous graph if you still aren’t clear about how the body
temperature rhythm flows.

If all of a sudden you revert to waking up at 6 AM instead of 8 AM, this doesn’t mean
that your body temperature will begin to rise at 6 AM, it will remain low and begin to
rise at 8 AM like it usually did, and possibly making you feel drowsy for 5 hours
instead of 3. Unless you expose yourself to high-intensity light, as we’ll explore soon.
This is why it is so hard to force yourself to wake up early, and why the popular belief
persists that waking up earlier than usual is painful!

This natural “clock” is also why some people do not need an alarm clock to wake up
at PRECISELY the same time every day. This isn’t a mysterious psychic force they
have; their body temperature simply rises at precisely the same time everyday.
In the next section we’ll examine all the details of optimizing your sleep clock.

Section Summary

Take this short quiz to better learn and remember what you’ve just read

1. What best describes deep sleep?
a. Super high brain waves, twitching muscles and rapid eye movement.
b. A type of human hibernation, we can use deep sleep to sleep past really cold
times.
c. Low brain waves, respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure. Dilated blood
vessels to allow blood to the muscles.
2. What is the sleep clock?
a. A system inside your body that counts the time until your inevitable death.
b. A system that measures blood pressure to determine when it’s time to sleep and
when it’s time to be awake and alert.
c. A system that measures light intensity and body temperature to determine when to
sleep, and how physically recharging your sleep is.
3. We sleep during the night because…
a. We’re all vampires except we’re not aware of it because we enter a different state
of consciousness while we’re out partying with Dracula.
b. It just seems like a good idea to sleep at night so we all do it.
c. Melatonin is produced during the day which prevents us from sleeping.
d. Melatonin is produced when we’re exposed to darkness, which causes us to feel
sleepy and our brain waves to lower.
4. Our immune system turns on to fight diseases in what sleep stage?
a. Stage 1
b. Deep Sleep (stage 3 & 4)
c. REM sleep
d. When we’re sleep walking or snoring.

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