What can you do to realign your biological clock with the external world when you work a rotating shift?

(A) Take regular naps throughout the day.

(B) Expose yourself to bright light while working.

(C) Take a break every hour to exercise for five minutes.

(D) Surround yourself with darkness while working.

The correct response is Option B: Expose yourself to bright light while working.

Explanation:

Most living beings on this Earth have what we colloquially refer to as "built-in clocks." This is a sense of time and our normal functional cycles that seem to regulate when we perform certain biological processes - - like always feeling hunger at lunchtime or always finding yourself hungry at lunch hour. This sense of time and how it is tied to your biological functions is called your circadian rhythms. Exposure to light has been found to affect our circadian rhythms in powerful ways. In one study among night shift workers, they were able to become effectively nocturnal after being exposed to bright light while they were working at night but then completely deprived of any natural light during the day when the night shift worker would sleep. These are hard conditions to reproduce for most workers.