How well do you sleep?

Researchers at the University of Kentucky want to know.

The university launched a program to expand its decade of work on the science of sleep and circadian rhythms.

The goal is to establish a nationally recognized center, secure major funding, and recruit top faculty.

More about that in tonight's look at medical news.

We've been a hub of circadian rhythms and sleep research for a couple of decades, but recently we've really increased our focus in this area.

So we have over 35 faculty in their labs studying circadian rhythms and sleep.

And we formed a consortium called Cache Kentucky.

So it's circadian and sleep health for a healthy Kentucky.

Your circadian rhythm is really your 24 hour cycle of your internal biological processes.

So this might be your physiology like the regulation of your glucose or your behaviors like when you want to go to sleep or when you eat.

And these these circadian rhythms are generated by an internal network of clocks.

So basically you have cellular clocks all through your body.

And the ideal situation is that those cellular clocks, your internal rhythms are synchronized with sunrise and sunset.

So when you talk about an early bird or a night owl, that's what we call your chronotype.

It's just the time when you want to do your daily activities.

What time do you want to go to sleep?

What time do you want to exercise?

What time do you want to eat?

There is actually nothing inherently wrong with being a night owl versus an early bird.

Where the problem comes in is that we live mostly in an early bird society, right?

Most people have to get up early to take their kids to school or to go to work.

Sleep is critical.

Sleep is one of the factors in our life that is the most modifiable and is associated with the most health problems.

So we know that in adults are getting five hours or fewer than that.

Fewer than five hours of sleep is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, mortality.

And so we this consortium studies everything from, you know, basic science in preclinical models.

So animal models, you know, how does disrupting rhythms and sleep cause diabetes or cause cardiovascular disease.

All the way up to conducting clinical trials in circadian and sleep interventions.

And so, you know, we're really working to, you know, make new discoveries, in the circadian rhythms and sleep field, contribute to circadian medicine.

So teaching people about how they can improve their sleep and their rhythms to, you know, have good health.

So my my kind of magic recommendations for good sleep and good circadian rhythms would be don't eat after 8 p.m..

Try to get in bed and go to sleep by 11 almost every day of the week, you know, give or take an hour.

Wake up.

You know, around the time that the sun is rising.

So maybe by like depending on the time of year around 7 a.m. and really get exposed to that bright light for 30 minutes or an hour in the morning.

The Cache Key program is also working to help the public improve its sleep.