Chances are you’ve used a zeitgeber recently, even if you’ve never heard the word. Zeitgebers could be useful tools in the coming days when most of us set our clocks back an hour as we “fall back” to standard time. We could use that “bonus” hour to run errands, catch up on email, watch a favorite show, or—if we can—stay in bed and snooze.
“A lot of people—not just patients but also their physicians—don’t recognize circadian rhythm problems,” Dr. Sally Ibrahim, sleep specialist and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times. “Daylight savings time gets it on people’s radars that we have these clocks in our bodies, and what we do every day will train our internal rhythm.
” Being hungry at irregular times Broken sleep or insomnia Restless leg syndrome Problems concentrating Mood disturbances “We can retrain our bodies to signal us differently,” she said. “If I could have a boot camp for people with circadian rhythm disorders, I’d do it.” “Entrain” is another word in the vernacular of sleep specialists.
Essentially, it means that when you vary the rhythm of something, you will gradually synchronize with it. Entraining is an easy—not to mention free—solution for biological problems related to sleep or other rhythms that most of us have experienced at one time or another. Viewing early morning light and as much light as possible throughout the day can help with small circadian rhyt.