How Blue Light And Caffeine Will Help Humans Move To Mars
25 replies, posted
[QUOTE]Living vicariously through a robot on Mars seems glamorous, and in many ways it is, zapping rocks and scooping up sand and whatnot. But the schedule is brutal--Mars has a longer day than Earth, and this is legendarily painful for everyone involved in a mission on that world. Now a new study says it’s possible to adjust, however, resetting our Earthbound circadian rhythms to follow the cycle of Mars instead of our home planet.
The innate human biological clock is not a perfect 24 hours, but rather about 24 hours and 12 minutes--not too short of a Martian sol, which rings in at 24 hours and 39 minutes. But our clocks reset daily according to Earth’s light-dark cycle, which keeps us on track, said Steven Lockley, associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “Our body clocks have not evolved to live on a Martian day, and when we try to force them to do so, it’s very difficult for our body clocks to reset each day,” he said.
This is a major problem and active area of research for space travel. Astronauts on the International Space Station (and formerly on the space shuttles) have a hard time sleeping, too, largely related to the 90-minute window between each sunrise and sunset. Sleep medications are the most widely used medications in space, Lockley said.
Incidentally, this is also a problem for blind people, who frequently suffer from sleep disorders related to their lack of light perception. “In some of the totally blind people I study, their body clocks are much closer to a Martian day, and in fact they would find it much easier to live on this schedule--but sighted people cannot,” Lockley said.
In a study being published this month, Lockley and several colleagues report that it’s possible but tricky to reprogram our clocks. The key is the proper combination of light, caffeine and drugs--and realizing that you can’t just get up and deal with exhaustion, he said.
“You often hear things like ‘Sleep is for wimps,’ ‘You can sleep when you’re dead,’” he said. “It’s seen as a rite of passage in some professions to work 20 hour days. As a
society, we don’t value sleep enough. People will say, ‘I’m fine, I’m made of good stuff, I’ll be able to push my way through.’”
The team studied members of the Mars Phoenix mission, which operated a lander near the frigid north pole back in 2008. Light is the strongest time cue, so the experiment used light to re-train the team’s body clocks. In 2006, scientists recognized a new photoreceptor set in mammal eyes, which detects light at the blue end of the spectrum to help calculate time. The set is located in ganglion cells in the front of the retina, and is separate from the familiar rods and cones in the back, which we use to see.
Lockley and colleagues wanted to stimulate this photoreception system, so participants each got a box with 276 blue LEDs inside it, complete with a 20-inch piece of string so they knew how far away it should sit. They turned it on during their shifts--which may have happened in Earthly daylight or in the middle of the night, depending on the day. “It’s like traveling three time zones west every two days. It essentially creates a jet lag,” Lockley explained.
The team members also got a crash course in how to crash properly--when to use caffeine and when to stop so it clears the system by bedtime; how to properly arrange a dark and comfy bedroom; and a “recognition that people are not superhuman,” Lockley said. If team members were tired, they were supposed to report to a higher-up and find someone to help. The participants also had to give urine samples so the team could check for metabolites indicating the circadian rhythm, and wore wrist-mounted motion- and light-trackers to monitor their light exposure and sleep cycles.
It turned out 87 percent of them synchronized to the Martian clock. They slept an average of six hours a night, but were less fatigued and more alert than those who didn’t synchronize to Mars.
Along with helping Mars scientists sleep better, a Mars-synchronization program could help prevent accidents, Lockley believes.
“We spend a lot of money and effort planning the equipment, the communications, all the technical aspects of a mission, but we don’t seem to invest as much in the human factors,” he said. “We need to have a more open and more honest discussion about fatigue, and this will become more important if we ever develop a manned mission to Mars."
The study appears in the October issue of the journal Sleep.
[img]http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/clock.png[/img]
[I]A new study says exposure to blue light at the right times, along with smarter caffeine use, can help humans adjust our biological clocks to the 24.6 hour Mars day rather than Earth's day. og2t via Flickr
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Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/blue-light-and-caffeine-can-help-earth-evolved-humans-transition-mars-shift[/url]
so blue leds DO make you run cooler
Just curious, but why wouldn't Mars' day-night cycle reset our biological clocks like Earth's does?
[quote]The innate human biological clock is not a perfect 24 hours, but rather about 24 hours and 12 minutes--not too short of a Martian sol, which rings in at 24 hours and 39 minutes. But our clocks reset daily according to Earth’s light-dark cycle, which keeps us on track,[/quote]
Except not really...
Imagine it as if you lived in a place on earth where the sun hit the center of the sky every day. If you started a stopwatch at 12pm, and waited until the sun was at the top of the sky on the second day, it will be 24 hours and 12 minutes.
The reason for this is that 24 hours just marks a single rotation, but you have to rotate slightly further to adjust for the slight angular difference due to the earth revolving around the sun AND spinning on it's own axis.
[QUOTE=FalseLogic;38004505]Except not really...
Imagine it as if you lived in a place on earth where the sun hit the center of the sky every day. If you started a stopwatch at 12pm, and waited until the sun was at the top of the sky on the second day, it will be 24 hours and 12 minutes.
The reason for this is that 24 hours just marks a single rotation, but you have to rotate slightly further to adjust for the slight angular difference due to the earth revolving around the sun AND spinning on it's own axis.[/QUOTE]
Your name doesn't fit your explanation
[QUOTE=MightyMax;38003482]so blue leds DO make you run cooler[/QUOTE]
Never changing keyboard again.
Unless the new one is blue too
I demand my layouts and Can-D
I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit!
[QUOTE=sltungle;38005544]I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit![/QUOTE]
I sleep like a bear, don't know about anyone else though. :v:
Well at least we know now what colour the future will be, thank god it didn't turn out to be yellow.
[QUOTE=MightyMax;38003482]so blue leds DO make you run cooler[/QUOTE]
We need to combine the other colors to colonize it.
[QUOTE=jiggu;38004988]Never changing keyboard again.
Unless the new one is blue too[/QUOTE]
Mine is red
might explain why I'm so hot and get all the ladies
[QUOTE=sltungle;38005544]I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit![/QUOTE]
I get little sleep due to being swamped with schoolwork. I don't think it's "cool", I'd love to be able to get 9-10 hours every night :(
So are you supposed to get the blue light during the evening.
At least that's what I thought.
But since I got F.lux I've been confused when it tints my screen with orange when the clock hits 18:00.
[QUOTE=sltungle;38005544]I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit![/QUOTE]
Hah, I wish I thought sleeping so little was cool. At least that might distract me from the giants bugs on my walls while I trip the fuck out from sleep deprivation.
[QUOTE=Sunday_Roast;38006730]So are you supposed to get the blue light during the evening.
At least that's what I thought.
But since I got F.lux I've been confused when it tints my screen with orange when the clock hits 18:00.[/QUOTE]
F.lux does that because it's easier on the eyes
[QUOTE=sltungle;38005544]I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit![/QUOTE]
Sleeping like 5 hours every day or less is unacceptable, and so is a too varied biorhythm.
A lot of people seem to think "Hey, I feel no side-effects, this is the right amount for me". Those people can say hello to long-term fun symptoms such as depression, stress, reduced cognitive abilities, anxiety, anti-social behavior etc. - and most people don't even realize the connection.
Sleep is [U]important.[/U] Get enough of it people! And equally important: have a sound biorhythm.
[QUOTE=sltungle;38005544]I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit![/QUOTE]
I can understand this but when you have 14-18 hour work days, getting more than 6 hours is sometimes just difficult, and not functioning well off of that little is not going to be beneficial for your job.
Though, I can't function well without 6. 6 is perfect for me.
[QUOTE=mac338;38029397]Sleeping like 5 hours every day or less is unacceptable, and so is a too varied biorhythm.
A lot of people seem to think "Hey, I feel no side-effects, this is the right amount for me". Those people can say hello to long-term fun symptoms such as depression, stress, reduced cognitive abilities, anxiety, anti-social behavior etc. - and most people don't even realize the connection.
Sleep is [U]important.[/U] Get enough of it people! And equally important: have a sound biorhythm.[/QUOTE]
I myself run on mostly stable 7 hour sleeping period, but I know people who sleep 5 and are some of the most energetic, alert and happy people I know.
Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I don't.
The problem with sleep is that it's just so [I]boring.[/I] Why would I lie down and wait to pass out when I could be doing stuff? Like drawing, or playing X-Com?
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;38029508]I myself run on mostly stable 7 hour sleeping period, but I know people who sleep 5 and are some of the most energetic, alert and happy people I know.[/QUOTE]
You won't necessarily see the effects on them. 8 hours is recommended for the vast majority of people, but people are different.
5 hours however, is recommended only to those with the hDEC2 gene, a fraction of a quartz of a smidgen of a tenth of a percent. (Even less of that for teenagers)
[QUOTE=mac338;38029613]You won't necessarily see the effects on them. 8 hours is recommended for the vast majority of people, but people are different.
5 hours however, is recommended only to those with the hDEC2 gene, a fraction of a quartz of a smidgen of a tenth of a percent. (Even less of that for teenagers)[/QUOTE]
woah i didnt know about this gene, ive always felt like ~5 hours is the right amount of sleep for me. 8 hours or more of sleep just makes me feel like complete shit and I can't wake up well at all after ~6 hours.
itd be cool to know if i have this
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;38029897]ive always felt like ~5 hours is the right amount of sleep for me. 8 hours or more of sleep just makes me feel like complete shit and I can't wake up well at all after ~6 hours.[/QUOTE]
To be brutally honest, more often than not that has to do with a biorhythm and not the amount of sleep.
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;38029897]woah i didnt know about this gene, ive always felt like ~5 hours is the right amount of sleep for me. 8 hours or more of sleep just makes me feel like complete shit and I can't wake up well at all after ~6 hours.
itd be cool to know if i have this[/QUOTE]
I think it's safe to say that the best amount of sleep for you is the amount you feel comfortable with. Generally I can agree tho, regardless of the length, the most important thing is keeping the rhythm as steady as possible.
[QUOTE=sltungle;38005544]I hate it when people seem to think it's not only acceptable, but 'cool' to run on little sleep. Fuck off, I love sleep and I need it to function properly, god dammit![/QUOTE]
As someone with a permanently mongo'd sleeping pattern I agree, I'm always shattered and can never catch up on my sleep and it's actually fucking brutal.
[QUOTE=mac338;38029978]To be brutally honest, more often than not that has to do with a biorhythm and not the amount of sleep.[/QUOTE]
u know more about this than me it seems, but ive done 5 hours consistently and i just always feel really great. it feels like a sweetspot to me.
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