The clocks fell back an hour this weekend, which sounds like a gift — an extra hour of sleep, free of charge. Then Monday arrives, the sun sets at what feels like 2 PM, you're wide awake at 11 and useless by 3, and the "gift" starts to feel more like a prank. Between that, the sugar wreckage of Halloween, and whatever happened at the St. Johns Pet Parade, a lot of you are walking into this week a little scrambled 🐾
The scramble is real, and it's your internal clock lagging behind the wall clock. The good news is that light — the right kind, at the right time — is the fastest way to drag it back into sync.
Why your screens are working against you at night
Whether you feel sleepy at night runs largely on melatonin, the hormone that rises in the evening to signal that the day is winding down. Bright light, especially the blue wavelengths pouring out of phones, laptops, and overhead LEDs, suppresses that rise and stalls the whole process. In a 2025 study in the journal Life, people exposed to blue light in the evening had their melatonin suppressed to 7.5 pg/mL after two hours, while those under red light recovered to 26.0 — more than three times higher. Same brightness, wildly different effect on the signal that's supposed to be telling you it's bedtime.
Red light sits at the far, gentle end of the spectrum, and your circadian system barely registers it. It won't knock you out like a sedative — nothing about it forces sleep — but unlike the lighting in the rest of your life, it doesn't actively fight your wind-down. Swapping harsh evening light for something warm and red in the last hour before bed is one of the simpler ways to stop sabotaging a night of sleep you actually want.
The other half of the story: morning
Dimming the lights at night is only one end of the fix. The move that actually shifts your clock earlier — which is exactly what you need after falling back — is bright light in the morning. A classic study in Sleep found that morning bright light pulled people's circadian rhythm about 1.2 hours earlier, while evening light pushed it 1.6 hours later. Light is the lever in both directions; timing decides which way it moves you.
So the full reset is a two-parter: get real light in your eyes early (step outside, open the blinds, take a morning walk even when it's gray — Portland gray still counts), and go warm and dim in the evening. Do both for a few days and the new schedule stops feeling like jet lag you didn't even get a trip out of.
In the recovery center
The red light bed is more than a nice-to-have in November. A session in warm red light during that tricky evening window gives you the wind-down wavelengths without the melatonin-suppressing ones your living room is full of — a calm, screen-free fifteen minutes that works with your body's clock instead of against it. Pair a few evening sessions with some deliberate morning light this week, and the fall-back adjustment goes from a week of fog to a couple of days.
The hour will give itself back. A little light, aimed right, just helps you collect it sooner 🌙
See you in the (warm, ambient, melatonin-friendly) light,
Your West Coast Fitness Family
P.S. The St. Johns Pet Parade was every bit as good as you'd hope — proof that the best cure for a time change and a candy hangover might just be a street full of costumed dogs 🐶
