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August 6, 2013

FOR KIDS: Nature resets body’s clock

A short camping trip could help people rise and shine, researchers report.

After a week living in tents in Colorado’s Rockies, campers’ internal clocks shifted about two hours earlier.

It transformed even night owls into early birds.

“It’s a clever study, and it makes a dramatic point,” says Katherine Sharkey. A sleep researcher and physician at Brown University in Providence, R.I., she did not work on the new study.

People get much more light outside than they do indoors, she notes. And that can reset their internal body clocks.

A master clock in the brain controls the release of melatonin. This hormone prepares the body for sleep. Melatonin levels rise in the early evening and then taper off in the morning before a person wakes up.

Kirtland Peterson

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