In an experiment, science journalist Lynne Peeples spent 10 days in an underground bunker, with no exposure to sunlight or clocks. She wanted to see what happened to her body and mind when it became out of sync with its natural circadian rhythm. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about what she learned, how we change with age, and the importance of sunlight. Her book is The Inner Clock.Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews the series Laid and Going Dutch.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. If you need an alarm clock to wake up each morning, which most of us do, you are likely suffering from social jet lag. That's a mismatch between your biological clock and your daily schedule. And according to a new book by science journalist Lynn Peoples, drinking coffee or sleeping in on the weekends won't help you get back on track.
In her new book, The Inner Clock, Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms, Peoples gets into the latest science around our circadian rhythms and their importance in our overall health, even beyond the hours of sleep we get each night.
Peoples conducted her own experiment, first by living for 10 days in an underground bunker 50 feet below ground with no sunlight, watches, or clocks to better understand the rhythms that guide her from day to day.
In her book, Peoples digs into the latest research about how our internal clocks impact every facet of our lives, how well we do in school, our performance at work, how we interact with people, and even how long we live. There are even studies that link circadian disruption to cancer, depression, dementia, and Alzheimer's. Lynn Peoples is an MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow.
She's also a biostatistician and has conducted HIV clinical trials and environmental health studies. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Scientific American, and Nature. Lynn Peoples, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks so much for having me on. Let's just start with this experiment that you did. So this self-imposed hideout that you went on, it didn't just shield you from the sunlight.
You were without any emitted light, right? That even means your cell phones and your computer. None of those things were available to you to see light and also to see the time.
Well, to some extent. I did have LED lights in this bunker. So kind of a non-traditional bunker. This was a souped-up former Cold War era bunker that somebody had purchased and set up as an Airbnb. And so he had LED lights throughout the bunker, which... I could tune.
And because I had learned that red light is the color that's least likely to affect our circadian rhythms, I set the entire bunker to a dim red light. So I could see. I had some light, but it was nothing like what we experience indoors or especially outdoors. So absolutely no daylight and then none of those blue wavelengths of light that are known to particularly affect our circadian rhythms.
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