Once again you’re dreading the holiday season, not because you’re afraid you’ll spend too much money or you won’t get any presents, but because you know you’ll eat too much, including Christmas candy and cookies. I know just how you feel, but you know it’s not just the holidays ~ unless your holidays start as soon as the thermometer drops to freezing! Fortunately, now there’s something that may help you keep from over eating and gaining weight this winter: a dawn simulator alarm clock.
I know what you’re thinking, but it’s true. Scientists in this field have discovered that sleep deprivation, which is one of the side effects of the winter blues, causes an increase in appetite – eating more to make up for sleeping less. And when you’re sleep deprived or otherwise stressed, you are especially hungry for comfort foods like sweets and starches, both of which temporarily boost your mood and make you feel more alert.
Sleep deprivation, for instance, is one of the major components of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), as people have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep because of the changes in the amount and quality of light they’re exposed to in winter. Often, even if they’re sleeping longer, their sleep is fragmented and not as restorative as it should be, and eventually they become depressed. Then, in an effort to make themselves feel better, they over-eat and gain weight, which actually makes them feel worse and may, ironically enough, lead to yet more over-eating.
Even people who don’t have full-blown SAD find themselves affected by the short, darker days of the winter months. You get up and go to work in the dark, come home in the dark, and may not even get a glimpse of sunlight for days or weeks at a time. It’s like living on soup and salad, and never getting to the main course. A dawn simulator alarm clock can add back that entree of bright light your daily “meals” are missing.
The way the human body works is this: as the sun goes down your body begins to secrete melatonin-the natural hormone that tells you that it’s time to sleep. The release of melatonin earlier in the day may be why you often see people yawning and stretching in the middle of the afternoon of a winter’s day, or yawning or nodding off while watching television in the evening after supper (or maybe even during supper!).
In the same way, when the sun comes up in the morning, your body shuts down its production of melatonin and begins to produce serotonin instead. Among other things, serotonin helps you feel more awake and “up” as you enter your day. However, it takes light to trigger the production and release of serotonin, so in the darkness of winter mornings you’re working against your body chemistry just getting up. This is probably why some people seem to sleepwalk through the first few hours they’re “awake.”
Often, these same people content themselves with a cup of coffee instead of breakfast, because they’re not really awake enough to have any appetite. By the time they finally feel awake and hungry, a healthy breakfast is not an option, and the mid morning snack or early lunch is likely to be heavy on the sugar and starches.
A dawn simulator alarm clock may be able to help you reset your body clock and your sleep cycle, canceling out the negative effects of winter–including the tendency to over-eat to make up for lost sleep, and the added pounds of “winter weight” that brings. Maintaining a regular sleep cycle may well turn your dread of winter and the holidays into the anticipation and excitement you felt when you were a child.
What a gift that would be. And all thanks to a light that helps restore a healthy sleep cycle. Isn’t nature miraculous?
Before you buy anything online, skim through Rebecca Reynolds excellent web review of dawn simulator alarm clocks and what benefits a dawn simulator alarm clock can offer you.