Circadian phase advances in children during camping life according to the natural light-dark cycle

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Abstract

Background

It is known that the circadian rhythm phase in adults can be advanced in a natural light-dark cycle without electrical lighting. However, the effect of advanced sleep-wake timing according to the natural light-dark cycle on children’s circadian phase is unclear. We investigated the effects of approximately 2 weeks of camping life with little access to artificial lighting on children’s circadian phases. We also conducted an exploratory examination on the effects of wake time according to natural sunrise time on the manner of the advance of their circadian phases.

Methods

Twenty-one healthy children (mean ± SD age, 10.6 ± 1.4 years) participated in a camping program with wake time (4:00) being earlier than sunrise time (EW condition), and 21 healthy children (10.4 ± 1.1 years) participated in a camping program with wake time (5:00) being almost matched to sunrise time (SW condition). Salivary dim light melatonin onset (DLMO) before the camping program and that after approximately 2 weeks of camping were compared.

Results

DLMO was advanced by approximately 2 h after the camping program compared with the circadian phase in daily life in both conditions. In addition, the advances in DLMO were significantly correlated with mid-sleep points before the camp in both conditions (EW: r = 0.72, p < 0.01, SW: r = 0.70, p < 0.01). These correlations mean that the phase advance was greater for the children with delayed sleep habits in daily life. Furthermore, in the EW condition, mean DLMO after the camp (18:09 ± 0:33 h) was earlier than natural sunset time and there was no significant decrease in interindividual variability in DLMO. On the other hand, in the SW condition, mean DLMO after the camp (18:43 ± 0:20 h) matched natural sunset time and interindividual variability in DLMO was significantly lower than that before the camp.

Conclusions

Camping with advanced sleep and wake timing under natural sunlight advances children’s circadian phases. However, DLMO earlier than sunset in an early waking condition may lead to large interindividual variability in the circadian rhythm phase.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40101-022-00316-x.

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Most cited references 40

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The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review.

Julia F Dewald, Anne M. Meijer, Frans J Oort … (2010)

Insufficient sleep, poor sleep quality and sleepiness are common problems in children and adolescents being related to learning, memory and school performance. The associations between sleep quality (k=16 studies, N=13,631), sleep duration (k=17 studies, N=15,199), sleepiness (k=17, N=19,530) and school performance were examined in three separate meta-analyses including influential factors (e.g., gender, age, parameter assessment) as moderators. All three sleep variables were significantly but modestly related to school performance. Sleepiness showed the strongest relation to school performance (r=-0.133), followed by sleep quality (r=0.096) and sleep duration (r=0.069). Effect sizes were larger for studies including younger participants which can be explained by dramatic prefrontal cortex changes during (early) adolescence. Concerning the relationship between sleep duration and school performance age effects were even larger in studies that included more boys than in studies that included more girls, demonstrating the importance of differential pubertal development of boys and girls. Longitudinal and experimental studies are recommended in order to gain more insight into the different relationships and to develop programs that can improve school performance by changing individuals' sleep patterns. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Social jetlag and obesity.

Till Roenneberg, Karla V. Allebrandt, Martha Merrow … (2012)

Obesity has reached crisis proportions in industrialized societies. Many factors converge to yield increased body mass index (BMI). Among these is sleep duration. The circadian clock controls sleep timing through the process of entrainment. Chronotype describes individual differences in sleep timing, and it is determined by genetic background, age, sex, and environment (e.g., light exposure). Social jetlag quantifies the discrepancy that often arises between circadian and social clocks, which results in chronic sleep loss. The circadian clock also regulates energy homeostasis, and its disruption-as with social jetlag-may contribute to weight-related pathologies. Here, we report the results from a large-scale epidemiological study, showing that, beyond sleep duration, social jetlag is associated with increased BMI. Our results demonstrate that living "against the clock" may be a factor contributing to the epidemic of obesity. This is of key importance in pending discussions on the implementation of Daylight Saving Time and on work or school times, which all contribute to the amount of social jetlag accrued by an individual. Our data suggest that improving the correspondence between biological and social clocks will contribute to the management of obesity. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Entrainment of the human circadian clock to the natural light-dark cycle.

Ann K. Wright, Jennifer B Griffin, Thomas Rusterholz … (2013)

The electric light is one of the most important human inventions. Sleep and other daily rhythms in physiology and behavior, however, evolved in the natural light-dark cycle [1], and electrical lighting is thought to have disrupted these rhythms. Yet how much the age of electrical lighting has altered the human circadian clock is unknown. Here we show that electrical lighting and the constructed environment is associated with reduced exposure to sunlight during the day, increased light exposure after sunset, and a delayed timing of the circadian clock as compared to a summer natural 14 hr 40 min:9 hr 20 min light-dark cycle camping. Furthermore, we find that after exposure to only natural light, the internal circadian clock synchronizes to solar time such that the beginning of the internal biological night occurs at sunset and the end of the internal biological night occurs before wake time just after sunrise. In addition, we find that later chronotypes show larger circadian advances when exposed to only natural light, making the timing of their internal clocks in relation to the light-dark cycle more similar to earlier chronotypes. These findings have important implications for understanding how modern light exposure patterns contribute to late sleep schedules and may disrupt sleep and circadian clocks. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Shigekazu Higuchi:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7131-0792

higu-s@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Physiol Anthropol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Physiol Anthropol

Title: Journal of Physiological Anthropology

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Print): 1880-6791

ISSN (Electronic): 1880-6805

Publication date (Electronic): 16 December 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 16 December 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 41

Electronic Location Identifier: 42

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.177174.3, ISNI 0000 0001 2242 4849, Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Sciences, , Kyushu University, ; 4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540 Japan

[2 ]GRID grid.177174.3, ISNI 0000 0001 2242 4849, Department of Human Science, Faculty of Design, , Kyushu University, ; 4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540 Japan

[3 ]Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540 Japan

[4 ]GRID grid.416859.7, ISNI 0000 0000 9832 2227, Department of Sleep-Wake Disorders, , National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, ; 4-1-1 Ogawa-Higashi, Kodaira, Tokyo, 187-8553 Japan

[5 ]GRID grid.415747.4, Occupational Stress and Health Management Research Group, , National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, ; 6-21-1 Nagao, Tama-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa 214-8585 Japan

[6 ]GRID grid.39158.36, ISNI 0000 0001 2173 7691, Laboratory of Environmental Ergonomics, Faculty of Engineering, , Hokkaido University, ; Kita 13, Nishi 8, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8628 Japan

[7 ]GRID grid.412200.5, ISNI 0000 0001 2228 003X, Faculty of Sport Science, , Nippon Sport Science University, ; 7-1-1 Fukasawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, 158-8508 Japan

Author information

Taisuke Eto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0347-7408

Shingo Kitamura https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9607-1812

Yuki Nishimura https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4172-0472

Sang-il Lee https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8998-5827

Michihiro Ohashi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8583-4471

Akiko Shikano https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8447-6476

Shingo Noi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1902-7735

Shigekazu Higuchi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7131-0792

Article

Publisher ID: 316

DOI: 10.1186/s40101-022-00316-x

PMC ID: 9756595

PubMed ID: 36527162

SO-VID: 9d9c20d4-579e-44b9-867e-196b31da1cdd

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 21 August 2022

Date accepted : 6 December 2022

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science;

Award ID: JP15H02426

Award ID: JP17K18926

Award Recipient : Shigekazu Higuchi

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Anthropology

Keywords: circadian rhythm,melatonin,children,sleep,camping,lighting,physiology,photoperiods,non-image forming effect

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Anthropology

Keywords: circadian rhythm, melatonin, children, sleep, camping, lighting, physiology, photoperiods, non-image forming effect

Circadian phase advances in children during camping life according to the natural light-dark cycle

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Abstract

Background

Methods

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Conclusions

Supplementary Information

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European Yearbook of the History of Psychology

Most cited references 40

The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review.

Social jetlag and obesity.

Entrainment of the human circadian clock to the natural light-dark cycle.

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