Sleep is one of the most fundamental parts of human life. As most mattress salesmen will remind you, we spend over a third of our lives in an unconscious, resting state. And regardless if we have the latest Tempur-Pedic that somehow magically allows us to doze off peacefully while somebody is jumping on the bed with a full glass of wine, we still can’t get the whole sleeping thing right.
Now, after 25 years of research, Australian scientists have released a device called the Re-Timer, which is a green light device that you wear like a pair of glasses to help reset your body clock. Sorry ladies, not your biological clock, but your inner brain clock that tells you when you are tired and when to get be awake.
In today’s frenetic, fast paced world – with deadly bombings that make your want to stay in bed and air travel that takes us to distant time-zones in shorter periods of time, the Re-Timer will get you back on track.
In fact, our circadian rhythm, which is the fancy science name for our body clock, is responsible for not only our sleep cycles, but also our metabolism, our alertness and our productivity. In the old days, when we were pulling around our significant others by the hair and grunting for food, our circadian rhythms were our own personal alarm clocks, telling us when to hunt, when to eat and when to sleep and for how long. Over time this alarm clock has gotten little worn out.
The main ingredient that powers the clock: sunlight. If we stay inside for too long, travel to other time zones or even work too long, it will mess the whole system up.
The Re-Timer, which looks like a ridiculous pair of 3D glasses, emits a green light that effectively activates the photoreceptors in our eyes which are responsible for regulating our circadian rhythms.
Chief inventor of the Re-Timer Leon Lack from the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, who came up with the idea in the 1980s and who looks like a more handsome Charlton Heston, says that the device should be worn 50 minutes shortly after waking up and 50 minutes before bed so that you can wake up earlier and go to bed on time in order to get you on a generally better sleep schedule. Lack also says that you only need to wear the device for 3 or 4 days to see results.
If you head to the Re-Time website, you can even find a jet lag calculator that uses your destination and departure locations and times, to determine how long you should use the device to minimize the effects of jet lag. For frequent travelers and lazy teenagers, the Re-Timer is probably a really helpful device and at only $270 dollars it’s not a bad bargain, especially if you were just about to throw down even more money for a UV light therapy lamp and a fancy new mattress.
