Why circadian health for fertility?
Each and every one of our human bodies is governed by a circadian rhythm. This is the rhythm that syncs our sleep/wake cycle, and the many distinct pulses of hormones our bodies produce throughout the day. Your circadian rhythm is what gets thrown off track if you travel overseas to a different timezone. Its common knowledge that this type of travel will throw off your sleep, but have you also noticed how it throws off your digestion, and can sometimes cause your menstrual cycle to be longer or shorter than usual?
That’s because the circadian rhythm is the master clock that syncs all of the functions and messages of our body, not just when we feel sleep and when we feel alert. Strengthening your circadian rhythm improves so many different individual functions of your body in one fell swoop, rather than taking a piecemeal approach. In other words optimizing your circadian rhythm is a fundamental and pretty comprehensive approach to balancing your hormones, your metabolism and your overall health.
Your circadian rhythm functions through a cellular clock in your brain. This cellular body clock is located in a structure of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The suprachiasmatic nucleus is affected by changes in light. These changes in light exposure drive the clock and drive the rhythms of your body. In a dark environment at night this mechanism will increase production of melatonin which helps you sleep. During the day when light is abundant this mechanism will suppress melatonin production helping you feel awake and alert.
But it’s not just about sleeping and being awake.
This rhythm also regulates many of our bodies hormonal and metabolic signals and this is why we’re interested in the circadian rhythm for fertility. Your circadian rhythm also helps regulate the levels and pulses of sex hormones like LH and FSH estrogen and progesterone. These hormones also have daily peaks and valleys, just like melatonin does. When your circadian rhythm gets disrupted your sex hormone rhythm also gets disrupted. And of course that can lead to menstrual irregularities, and a disruption in timing of ovulation.
The most obvious example of this is how your menstrual cycle can get a little messed up when you travel to a different timezone.
Let’s talk about a few other reasons why the circadian rhythm and associated hormonal rhythms are important for preconception.
For one, melatonin is, as we mentioned, a critical part of regulating your sleep. And sleep is, of course, is a critical function that you need to maintain your immune system, metabolism, and cellular repair. But melatonin also acts as a powerful antioxidant and has been shown to influence reproductive functioning like healthy embryo implantation. So like most things in the body melatonin does not just have one purpose. We need it for sleep and we also need it for fertility.
Another circadian element is cortisol. Cortisol is another critical hormone that you may have heard of as your stress hormone. Cortisol has normal ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys just like the other hormones we’ve discussed. But, when your circadian rhythm is disrupted or you are engaged in high stress environments more than you should be, your cortisol can skyrocket and stay a lot higher than it should be. This high, sustained peak in cortisol can interfere with ovulation menstrual cycles, and it can also contribute to reproductive metabolic disorders like PCOS.
Male fertility is also affected by circadian rhythm. There is strong evidence to show that sperm quality may be influenced by time of day. Just as estrogen and progesterone levels change throughout the day so do testosterone levels.
So how do you know if your circadian rhythm is weak, and how can you improve it?
Strengthening your circadian rhythm for healthy hormones
So how do you crack that circadian rhythm? How do you get it stronger so that you sleep better, so that your metabolism is humming, and your ovulation is strong?
You start with your morning routine. This is what a morning routine can look like if you’re trying to support healthy hormones and strong circadian rhythm.
Keep mind here that you naturally have a cortisol rise in the morning, which is what helps you wake up and feel alert in the morning. That is a normal and healthy rise in cortisol. But far too often many of us have elements of our morning routine that make that cortisol go much higher than it naturally wants to go and makes it stay higher for longer than it would otherwise.
So here’s a typical morning routine for the modern woman:
You wake up in the morning to your phone alarm
You crawl out of bed you put on a pot of coffee
While you’re waiting for the coffee to brew you check your phone you realize how many emails came in overnight
You look at your schedule you’re running late…
and all of a sudden you’ve added caffeine, screen light, and a whole lot of anticipatory stress into the first 15 minutes of your morning. Your normal, healthy cortisol rise is now a spike two times the normal amount, and its not going down any time soon. And that’s just not the way you want to start your day or to treat your adrenal glands.
Let’s walk through what to do instead step-by-step.
You wake up, you get out of bed and you walk straight to the sunlight.
Yup, straight to the sunlight.
Okay, fine, if you need to pee or if you absolutely need a sip of water, go ahead and take care of the bodily needs of yourself or of your family members, but then go straight to the light. So what do we mean by light? If you are lucky enough to have easy access to outdoor space then this is going to be easy for you. Walk straight outside onto your porch your patio your yard. If you don’t have easy access to the outdoors immediately from your home, like for example, if you live in a high-rise and you have to take a stairs or an elevator to get outside, you can either tie up your laces and take a little stroll to get outside, or at the very least go to a window and open up the window. Yes, even if it’s cold outside.
The reason this is important is because when you are receiving those early morning light frequencies through the cones in the rods of your eyes, you are providing critical information to your suprachiasmatic nucleus (remember, the master clock!)
This is the simplest thing you can do to strengthen your circadian rhythm but it is often times the hardest routine for people to implement. But here’s the thing… You don’t need to spend tons of time outside in the morning to receive the benefits of morning light for your circadian rhythm. Especially when you’re starting out and this is a new habit, you can start with 2-5 minutes. Make it easy for yourself to establish this practice regularly.
If you’re worried about not having enough time to dedicate in the morning to this small routine you may have to wake up a bit earlier than you might already. If you’re someone who has to sleep through sunrise because of your work schedule, just do your best. For example, if you are a shift worker, you should prioritize your sleep and get a full rest, and then whenever you wake up in the morning step outside go to your window and get the light at that point.
Once you begin to practice this simple ritual of waking up with the sun, and getting bright morning light into your eyes, you are likely to sleep more soundly, have more energy throughout the day, and begin to see stronger and more regular ovulation symptoms. Circadian rhythm strengthening is not an afterthought for fertility and pregnancy preparation. It’s the first thing you should be dialing in.