Get ready for the day of 25 hours. A new study, financed by NASA, shows that it is possible to stop an extra hour in the day.
Researchers included Charles Czeisler, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School Sleep Medicine Division Director School and Sleep Medicine Division Chief in Brigham and Boston Female Hospital.
They studied 12 healthy young adults (mean age: 28) who offered to spend 65 days living in single windows, clocks or any other suggestions.
Before the experiment, volunteers have eight hours of night sleep at home for at least three weeks.
When they reported to the laboratory, they spent three days on a normal day 24 hours. Then the researchers adjusted the hours of light and the darkness to identify the natural circadian rhythm of the participants, commonly called "body watch".
Then the tacked scientists in an extra hour of light for the light of each participant for each amount of daily wakefulness.
The researchers did not leave the lights for an extra hour. At the end of each "day", scientists increased the light in aerial fluorescent lights, delivering two extremely bright light pulses.
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After the brilliant light pulses, the participants did not sleep immediately. They stayed in an extra hour, effectively receiving 25 hours a day.
Participants stayed in the cycle of 25 hours for a month. They adjusted to the timeline, judging by their body temperature and melatonin levels, a hormone involved in circadian rhythms.
Before leaving the laboratory, participants spent three days at a normal 24-hour time.
The discoveries can be useful if astronauts go to Mars. One day Marciano lasts 24.65 earthly hours, observe the researchers. They argue that without redefining the body's clock for a 25-hour day, Astronauts on Mars would constantly be Jetlagged, which could be dangerous.
Of course, Mars Astronauts are not the only people with circadian rhythm issues. Change workers and people with sleep disorders can also have body clock problems. The researchers write that "the implications of these findings are important because they can be used to treat circadian misalignment associated with spatial flight, change work of circadian rhythm sleeping and disorders.
The study appears online in the initial edition of the National Academy process of Sciences.
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