Enhancing Sleep Quality During Shorter Days: Insights from Functional Medicine

Restorative sleep is crucial for balanced health and well-being. Having a regular sleep schedule synced well with your natural circadian rhythm or 24-hour body clock allows your body to rest, heal, and repair. 

Nature’s cycles of darkness and daylight significantly impact habits, routines, and your body. With shifting seasons, less daylight can impact your sleep, mood, hormones, and mindset. Without awareness and mindful approaches, sleep and health can easily become unbalanced.

Functional medicine for better sleep during shorter days looks at sleep science and uncovers underlying factors that may contribute to poor or inadequate sleep. This approach guides a holistic and individualized approach to improving your sleep all year round and regaining balance in your body. 

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Understanding the Impact of Light on Sleep

Your sleep patterns can be influenced by many factors, ranging from lifestyle habits to your bedroom environment. However, some major influences on when and how well you sleep are your circadian processes. The onset, duration, timing, and restorative sleep stages are coordinated by your body’s internal clock, the circadian rhythm. 

This natural 24-hour cycle is coordinated by “clock cells” that make up a “pacemaker” of sorts in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus. This area of your brain controls many vital body functions, including coordinating sleep-wake cycles. These cells sense cues from your environment and send signals to your brain about when it is time to sleep and wake up via several hormones and neurotransmitters to help align your sleep timing with nature’s cycles of darkness and daylight and temperature fluctuations. Light’s impact on sleep and circadian rhythms occurs via these pathways that play critical roles in the quality and duration of your sleep. 

The circadian pacemaker can adjust to changes that occur in nature with shifting seasons. These shifts generally result in staying awake longer during seasons with more extended periods of light and warmer temperatures and decreasing time awake during the day at times of the year with less light and lower temperatures. 

To maintain overall health, quality sleep, and good brain and body functioning, your circadian rhythm needs to remain synchronized and functioning correctly. Shorter days of daylight can make it more challenging to maintain a regular sleep-wake cycle, especially in modern times, where we are exposed to many sources of artificial light. Artificial light interacts with the circadian system and seasonal shifts. It can contribute to misalignment between your sleep-wake cycle and the light-dark cycle of the environment, especially during seasons with shorter days when you are more likely to have a lack of exposure to natural light during the daytime combined with exposure to longer periods of artificial light at night. 

Functional Medicine Perspective on Sleep

A functional medicine approach to sleep is based on understanding this physiology and how our bodies are connected with nature. This holistic approach seeks to identify and address the root causes of sleep disturbances, including those brought on by seasonal shifts during times of reduced daylight. 

Functional medicine integrates an understanding of how interconnected factors of lifestyle, environment, and physiology impact sleep. Seasonal shifts can bring about changes in light exposure and length of daylight, temperature, and stress, impacting the quality and quantity of sleep. Lifestyle habits, nutrition, genetics, location, and gut health influence how well your body adapts to changing seasons. Recognizing the impacts of these factors allows for developing an individualized management plan incorporating holistic sleep solutions. 

For example, the microbes living in your gut play significant roles in your health, including sleep. The composition of your gut microbiome is influenced by lifestyle factors such as physical activity and drinking alcohol, as well as environmental exposures like diet, infections, and day length. These influences can all fluctuate with the seasons, helping to explain why the composition of the microbiome also undergoes seasonal shifts. 

Your circadian clock monitors changes in day length by detecting light, so it can become thrown off when the days become shorter with less daylight. When your body clock is disrupted or thrown out of balance by changes in light exposure with the shifting seasons, it can impact your immune system, metabolism, and nervous system. 

These disruptions in your circadian rhythm that result from seasonal changes impact your sleep-wake cycle and overall health. Functional medicine encourages you to pay attention to your body and surroundings to help you become more in tune with nature’s rhythms to help keep your body balanced and avoid disrupted sleep.

Nutritional Strategies for Improved Sleep

Your diet can significantly impact your sleep. Dietary approaches to improved sleep involve paying attention to the timing, composition, and size of your meals and ensuring you are consuming adequate sleep-supporting nutrients. 

To help stabilize your circadian rhythms as the days become shorter, avoid stimulants like caffeine and other substances that can impact your brain’s function like alcohol. To help your body best prepare for optimal sleep, avoid eating any major meals within three hours before bedtime.

Various nutrients impact your sleep by affecting the hormones and neurotransmitters involved in sleep onset and your microbiome. For example, magnesium increases the production of the neurotransmitter GABA, which slows down your brain and helps you fall asleep. Foods rich in magnesium include pumpkin seeds, almonds, and spinach. Magnesium can also be taken as a supplement and/or used topically in the form of magnesium oil to help soothe muscles, prevent restless legs, and support sleep. Magnesium glycinate and bisglycinate are especially calming as they contain the amino acid glycine, which can calm the brain and help sleep. They also have fewer gastrointestinal side effects like loose stools. Between 310 and 420 milligrams of magnesium is generally recommended for improved sleep.

Given how important melatonin is in synching your circadian rhythm and preparing the body for sleep, it is not surprising that it is the focus of many sleep supplements and nutritional approaches to support sleep. Depending on the cause of the sleep disturbance, doses between 0.3-5 mg have been studied and taken two hours to 30 minutes before bedtime. No more than 10 mg should be taken at a time. In addition to being available as a supplement, you can support your body’s melatonin production via your diet. Foods that help increase melatonin include meats, mushrooms, a variety of vegetables, and fruits. Tart cherry juice has mainly been used to help gently induce sleep due to its high content of melatonin and serotonin.

Another nutrient that can help improve sleep as part of an overall anti-inflammatory diet is omega-3 fatty acids. Adequate consumption of omega-3 fatty acids is correlated with better sleep. Fatty fish and seafood can provide the long-chain omega-3s EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), which can also be obtained in fish oil, fish liver, and krill oil supplements. Guidelines recommend consuming one to two servings of oily fish per week or taking around one gram of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids per day in adults. Research has shown that giving six 480 mg capsules containing 576 mg DHA and 284 mg EPA daily to adults over 45 years of age improves sleep quality.

Lifestyle and Environmental Modifications

Lifestyle changes for better sleep can help you healthily adapt to the shifting seasons. As less sunlight enters your eyes during shorter days, signaling your brain to rest more, allow yourself to relax and follow nature’s pattern of slowing down during shorter days of the year. With less daylight, it is natural to be drawn towards more rest and reflection. 

Traditionally, people lived by the cycles of the sun without the disruption of artificial lighting. This natural cadence was connected with nature, awakening with the sunrise, staying most active during daylight, and slowing down to rest as the sun sets and darkness sets in. In modern times, it is easy to become disconnected from the natural rhythms of nature and the seasons with urban environments, constant stimulation, and on-demand artificial lighting. 

To resync your body with natural environmental cues, you can manage your light exposure in several ways. To keep your body in sync with a roughly 24-hour cycle, you need exposure to natural sunlight at the correct times of the day. Aim to allow sunlight to enter your uncovered eyes first thing in the morning so that the rays can hit the photoreceptors in your eyes and send signals directly to the hypothalamus in your brain, regulating your circadian clock. Even simply gazing at the sunrise, opening the blinds first thing in the morning, or taking a short walk outside in the sunshine can help your body stay balanced and optimize your sleep. 

On the other hand, artificial blue light exposure from screens may reduce deep sleep. Avoid blue light and other bright artificial lighting before bed. Instead, reach for a book instead of using electronic devices like your phone or tablet or engage in quiet activities like stretching or meditation. To reduce any exposure to light during the night, keep your bedroom dark with room-darkening shades and/or wear a comfortable eye mask to block light. 

Following a consistent sleep routine and creating an optimal environment for sleep can also improve your sleep quality. In addition to keeping your bedroom dark, keep the temperature comfortably cool and decrease disruptive noises.

Stress Management and Relaxation Techniques

Darker times of the year can bring changes in mood and energy. This can compound your stress levels when you feel pushed to go faster while nature is urging you to slow down. 

Stress and anxiety also impact sleep quality. 

Your stress response is regulated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which orchestrates a neurologic and hormonal response to stressors. This involves the release of cortisol, which can impact your circadian rhythm. With chronic or intense acute stress, increased cortisol, especially near bedtime, can reduce melatonin production and impair sleep. 

Incorporating stress management practices into your daily routine can help regulate the stress response and allow your body to more easily shift into a parasympathetic mode that favors sleep. Try stress reduction techniques such as mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, yoga, and other forms of gentle exercise to reduce chronic stress and the impacts it can have on your sleep.

Regular physical activity is excellent for regulating cortisol levels, managing stress, balancing mood, and helping to improve sleep. The darker, shorter days of the year are an excellent time to turn towards more restorative forms of movement. Relaxation techniques for better sleep include mind-body practices like yoga and tai chi that can help your body shift into more restful states and improve sleep quality. 

The Role of Hormonal Balance

One of the critical ways that light exposure helps to sync your circadian rhythms and help regulate a healthy sleep-wake cycle is via hormones and neurotransmitters. Exposure to light during the day and dark during the evening and night in your environment sends signals to your brain that coordinate the timing of hormone secretion.

Light and dark exposure play significant roles in regulating melatonin, cortisol, and other signaling messengers. When light enters your eyes, your brain sends signals to secrete hormones such as cortisol and serotonin, which prepare the body for the day’s activities. For example, your body temperature rises just before dawn to help you feel alert and ready to naturally wake up.

When you are immersed in greater darkness, the signals of decreased light produce hormones such as melatonin. This suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and stress hormones like cortisol to prepare your body for slowing down, cooling down, and falling asleep. 

Melatonin production is correlated with light exposure, with less light increasing melatonin production during seasons with shorter days. Artificial light can also impact melatonin, with blue light from screens having an especially suppressive impact on melatonin production. Using blue light-blocking glasses after dark and avoiding screen exposure close to bedtime can help your body get back in sync with the cycles of the season and help you sleep more deeply.

Chronic stress and living a life disconnected from nature can also impact how well your circadian rhythm stays in sync. If cortisol levels are too high from chronic unmanaged stress or produced too often or at the wrong times, melatonin production can become further dysregulated, impairing sleep. 

Functional medicine approaches can help you regain hormonal balance for sleep optimization. Optimizing circadian rhythm regulation and adrenal health can help maintain balanced hormones for improved sleep, even as the seasons shift. In addition to the stress management approaches discussed above, adaptogenic herbs, like ashwagandha, licorice root, and Rhodiola, can bring cortisol back into balance and support adrenal function. In addition, optimizing levels of vitamin C, magnesium, and B vitamins can support adrenal gland function. 

Use of Herbal Remedies and Supplements

In addition to supporting your sleep with balanced nutrition and a circadian-rhythm-supportive lifestyle, some herbal remedies and supplements can support sleep. Valerian root, chamomile, and lavender are some of the herbal remedies for sleep that promote relaxation and help the body fall asleep.

Valerian root is a plant that is native to Europe and Asia. This herb has been shown to help make it easier to fall asleep and improve sleep quality. Always avoid combining this herb with alcohol or other sedatives.

Chamomile is another plant with a long history of medicinal use, including to treat insomnia. Chamomile has soothing properties due to the flavonoid apigenin. Apigenin binds to benzodiazepine receptors in the brain to induce sleep and a sense of calm. 

Lavender is sleep-inducing due to its impact on the central nervous system. This plant acts on GABA receptors and the brain's cholinergic system to reduce anxiety, improve pain, protect brain health, and act as a sedative to support sleep. Studies show that inhaling lavender essential oil can effectively and reliably enhance the quality of sleep.

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Enhancing Sleep Quality During Shorter Days: Final Thoughts

Your body has intricately coordinated circadian systems that help you sync your sleep-wake cycle with the seasons. These are primarily regulated by exposure to environmental light and temperature changes. 

When everything is in balance, your body can run like clockwork, and you get optimal restorative sleep. But suppose your body clock is disrupted or thrown out of balance by seasonal changes in light exposure or other disruptions. In that case, your natural circadian rhythms can be thrown off, leading to a cascade of physiologic impacts.

Improving sleep with functional medicine involves paying attention to your daily habits and supporting your body in coming back into sync with nature’s cycles. A combination of environmental and physiological approaches is personalized to each person’s unique needs, preferences, and imbalances to help restore balance to the body. This allows for quality restorative sleep all year long that helps to maintain overall health and well-being.