I oftentimes struggle to fall asleep, and getting out of bed is just as difficult. But when I fast it seems that sleep comes a little easier and I always wake up before my alarm clock goes off when I’m fasted I do alternate day fasting for the record
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Anyone know why?
Orexin. When you do IF, anabolic hormones like insulin very a lot through out the day, as opposed to staying at the same level all day. That makes your orexin vary more. Orexin is the hormone that links your appetite/anabolic hormones to your wake/alert/sleep hormones.
I think about it as a signal quality thing. Higher signal quality in any hormone tends to improve signal quality in all hormones. This is just one example and in the case, it’s mediated by orexin.
I do ADF too, and if you look up the “jetlag diet”, what you’ll find is a similar pattern of eating and ‘fasting’ to reset the sleep/wake cycle. Of course, the jetlag diet’s ‘fasting’ is really just eating light, but the most important thing is the eating day, where you eat early in the morning upon waking.
This has to do with your peripheral circadian rhythm which involves food consumption. For some people, eating food late at night(dinner and supper) causes disturbances in sleep pattern because for those people, insulin release signals the body that it is daylight. When we fast, our body is completely relying on either light exposure and its memory of when you’d have your first and last meal on your fasting day.
The more you repeat your ADF patterns of fasting, and eating breakfast and lunch on your eating day, the less jetlagged you get and the more normalised your sleep-wake cycle gets.
I am typing this after waking up at 6am and slept at 10.30pm last night, and today’s my eating day. I’m going to have breakfast in a bit and expose myself to bright lights later to continue this sleep-wake cycle. I stop eating by 3pm to make sure my body can digest all the sugars before twilight so that my peripheral circadian rhythm don’t get interrupted.