Lisa De Pasquale

Do you need to be asleep before 10 pm to be alert the next day? Yes, if you have to wake up at 5 or 6 am to go to work and get your children ready for school. Do you know being sleepy at 10 pm starts with getting daylight in your eyes outdoors soon after you wake up? Why? Because the clocks in your body are tuned into your brain’s suprachiasmatic nucleus, and light is what sets it. Sunlight lets your melatonin levels fall so you can be alert for your day. And it starts the timer for when your melatonin rises in the evening to make you sleepy. And because melatonin levels respond to light, your lamps and overhead lights have to less bright in the evening for your body to produce melatonin. That means staring into a bright phone or computer screen can keep you up by blocking melatonin production. Without enough sleep, the next day you have brain fog and reach for coffee. Keep it up and that fogginess starts to feel normal because you’ve given up on ever feeling clear again. Even worse, there are so many causes of brain fog, this might be just one of yours. See my replies for a solution.