- Putting down your phone and living for a week with nothing but sunlight and campfires may bring your body clock in sync with nature's rhythms, a small study suggests.
And, researchers found, even avowed night owls turn into early birds after a week of camping in the woods with no sources of artificial light -- including smartphones, computers and TVs.
Part of the joy of camping in the wilderness is becoming aware of the natural daylight cycles and timing one's activities to correspond. Finding a campsite in good time to set up and make some food before dusk, watching the sunset, the first few twinkling stars and then to sleep. I certainly feel more attuned to the natural rhythms of the day when camping, but I like going alone, and avoiding fire, and using artificial lights as little as possible too. Roger Ekirch talks of there being a pre-industrial (pre-artifical/electric light) type of polyphasic sleep divided into two stages, with a period of wakefulness separating them and that this state was the norm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep Reports of people who've experimented with bi-divided sleep talk of 'never having been more awake in their lives' during the day.
I'm wondering, did you have a greater exposure to natural light? Or less artificial light?
I think that's what the article was saying. What offsets our internal clocks is a diminished exposure to natural light and augmented time with artificial. I guess any sort of "stabilization" could help restore order.