circadian rhythms, brain function
I am exquisitely sensitive to arguments around the circadian rhythm. when I was a young one I learned AutoCAD and entered the Architectural Lighting industry. Little did I know that at that time Lawsuits against prisons were being won in courts across the nation, to do with 24/7 Lighting installations their effects on sleep/wake patterns, and the Cruel and Unusual nature of such things.
I was a part of many relamping projects that were incurred by the victories that these lawsuits found, and it eventually bled itself into every conceivable standards document in every locality and state that Night Lighting schemes had to conform to these standards in order to mitigate the damage done to those who were not asleep in bed at night.
furthermore, when I was too young, and maybe shouldn't have known this story. the nice lady who worked at the counter at the gas station across the street from the high school was found wandering the streets naked. She had suffered a psychotic break. it was diagnosed to have been the case that she was physiologically, and bio-chemically incompatible with working night shifts.
Furthermore, all the same science, which was marshaled to diagnose this poor woman and was brought to bear in these lawsuits (much of which is decades old, and if you look into the founding documents of the Architectural Lighting Industry, initial organization; IES the illumination engineering society, which contains much of this information; and implies that it has been known since time immemorial); all of this information, magically reappeared in the most recent rewrite of the army's brand new Holistic Health standards, which contains a chapter on sleep. Sleep was previously given short shrift as to soldier's performance, in one phrase in the previous standards.
Soldiers require 4-6 hours of sleep per night to perform. now, there is a whole chapter, with sections and subsections discussing, timing, duration, and quality, and warns commanders that if ANY of these parameters are compromised you MUST account for this in your planning of missions and writing of orders in order to yield mission success.
and every time I was away from home at training, maybe put up in barracks or in a hotel, I made sure to sleep as early and often as i could. I was turning off lights and closing blinds, and trying to sleep around 8 pm, waking as early as 5 am on my own. and my physique responded accordingly. Sleep is an anabolic factor and so much more. verily the Spring forward daylight savings time change of the clock which correlates to one hour of sleep lost also correlates with a seasonally observable rise in heart attacks.
as a sleep expert once pointed out; it is a mere fact:
if you use an alarm clock or any means of waking yourself up, then you are not getting enough sleep. I am exquisitely sensitive to this argument, and much to the chagrin of my wife I make certain to allow the kids to wake when they will as often as possible.
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