02-01-2014, 04:06 AM
Quote:Do you know if this depends on time (as in, go to bed earlier than midnight) or is it just linked to the room being light/dark etc?No, no, it's more of a "universe" clock, not "personal", so to speak:D It doesn't have much with your individual shift in your daily rhythm.
For example, we produce thingy X (which is used to blablablah) while sleeping between 2am-4am (I forgot all that stuff, hence thingy X and random hours). And that's it:) We don't produce it if we sleep at some other time, nor if we are awake at 2-4am.
Our metabolism can adapt to some of the unnatural stuff, but there are stuff that are always connected to the actual cycle and not our personal. So, we could live by night and we would adapt to eat at night and sleep during the day, but we would be screwed in numerous other things, as our circadian clock is tuned with the "real" day/night cycle.
So, for example, we get jet lag:)
For example, Haze mentioned serotonin. For serotonin you need Sun. And there's no Sun at night. So, your organism is probably more in the mood of producing serotonin at 14h than at 03h. And even if we were to put you in front of some artificial sun at 03h every day, it wouldn't be optimal, because your body is like "oh, it's 03, we are in deep sleep now", no matter what you actually do or how much you've adapted to the night lifestyle.
That's why it's important to try to achieve and maintain personal cycle as close to the natural one.
And here I am blabbering when there's google:D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#Humans