Can't sleep at night and can't get up in the morning? Start by changing your morning light

If you only fall asleep at 2 a.m. and can't get up even with five alarms

Key points in 30 seconds

1. Falling asleep late and waking up late is more likely due to your body clock being pushed back than to a lack of willpower.
2. The body clock is set by light. Morning light pulls the clock earlier, and evening light pushes it later.
3. Indoor lighting is around 300–400 lux, and outdoor shade around 10,000. Standing outside on a cloudy day is several times brighter than sitting by a window.
4. The prescription is right after you wake up, outdoors, through your eyes. Fix your wake-up time, dim the lights in the evening, and don't catch up on sleep over the weekend.
5. If your mood has been low for more than two weeks, or you've been told you stop breathing in your sleep, check that first.

What we often hear

• "Even if I go to bed early, I'm wide awake for two hours."
• "I set five alarms and still can't get up."
• "I'm foggy all morning, then my mind clears up in the evening."
• "All I hear is that I just don't have enough willpower."

You lie down at midnight, but it's past 2 a.m. before you finally fall asleep.

In the morning, you can't get up even with five alarms, and once you do, your head doesn't work all morning. Then in the evening, strangely, your mind clears up, and you go to bed late again. People around you say you lack willpower and should just go to bed earlier, but when you lie down early, you're just wide awake.

This most likely isn't a willpower problem. It's a problem of your body clock being pushed back. And the most powerful tool for pulling that clock earlier is morning sunlight.

What sets the body clock?

Light. The principle that body clock researchers have uncovered is simple. Your internal clock looks at the light entering your eyes to figure out what time of day it is.

But the effect of light goes in opposite directions depending on the time of day.

• Early morning light pulls the clock earlier. You get sleepy earlier that night and wake up earlier the next day.
• Evening and nighttime light pushes the clock later. You get sleepy later and wake up later the next day.
• Midday light has almost no effect on the clock's hands.

Here's what a day looks like for people who go to bed late and get up late. In the morning, they barely get up in a curtained room and get ready under indoor lights, and in the evening they stay in bright places until late. In a study of university students in many countries, the more of a night owl someone was, the more evening light and the less morning light they got, and their clock was pushed back overall. It's a day of getting only the light that pushes the clock later, and none of the light that pulls it earlier.

There's research in the other direction, too. When people who lived under electric lighting went camping in the mountains for a week with only natural light, the times they fell asleep and woke up moved two hours earlier. Without any medication, just by changing the light.

I turn on the lights in the morning. Isn't that enough?

The brightness is different. In the exam room, we always say sunlight is hundreds of times brighter than the fluorescent lights in your home. Measured in units of brightness (lux), it looks like this.

Place	Brightness (lux)
Home or office lighting	300–400
By a window	3,000
Outdoor shade	10,000
Midday sunlight	100,000

Indoor lighting is enough for reading and telling colors apart, but it's often too weak to tell your body clock that real morning has arrived. Light coming through a window is also greatly reduced as it passes through the glass.

Standing outside on a cloudy day is several times brighter than sitting by a window on a sunny day. The light that sets your body clock is outside your door.

So what should I do?

First, go outside as soon as possible after you wake up. Specialist books on insomnia treatment recommend getting morning light within 15 minutes of waking, for about 45 minutes. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Walk one extra bus stop on your way to work, drink your coffee on the balcony, or take a short walk after dropping your child off. Take off your sunglasses and let the light reach your eyes. You don't need to look directly at the sun, and it works on cloudy days too.

Second, set your wake-up time before worrying about light. You can only get morning light if you get up. Fixing your wake-up time, no matter what time you fell asleep, is also the first rule of bed retraining. The first few days are hard, but as morning light builds up, the clock is pulled earlier and the time you get sleepy at night gradually moves earlier too. Bed retraining is summarized in If you can't sleep, get out of bed.

Third, reduce light in the evening. Starting an hour or two before bed, dim the lights at home, and use a low lamp instead of the ceiling light.

One more thing about smartphones. Specialist books point out that the human clock is less sensitive to light than you might think, so the effect of screen light itself may be smaller than commonly believed. The bigger problem is that screens keep us awake late. The key is not the brightness but what time you turn it off.

Fourth, don't catch up on sleep over the weekend. If you get up two hours later on the weekend, Monday morning becomes jet lag across two time zones. Keep the difference between your weekday and weekend wake-up times to under an hour.

When the sun rises late, as in winter, or it's hard to get outside, another option is to use a light therapy device that gives off bright light in the morning. If you have an eye condition or take certain medications, you need to discuss it first, so let's decide together at your visit.

If you work night shifts, the direction of light is reversed, so the approach is different too. See I've worked nights for years. Why haven't I adjusted yet?.

In these cases, something else needs checking first

• If, along with going to bed late, your mood has been low for more than two weeks and you've lost interest in things you used to enjoy, we recommend seeing someone for your mental health first.
• If you snore heavily and have been told you seem to stop breathing while asleep, a sleep apnea test comes first.
• In the teenage years, the clock naturally shifts later. A teenager's sleeping in may be part of development rather than laziness.

How we work

First, we look at where your clock is set. If you bring a 1–2 week sleep diary with the times you fell asleep and woke up, plus how long you were outside in the light in the morning, we can see whether your clock has shifted later or whether other causes are mixed in. We also look at your body's state of tension and alertness with blood tests and abdominal and pulse diagnosis.

Second, we pull the clock earlier while supporting your body. Together we build a daily light schedule: a fixed wake-up time, morning light, and less evening light. We use acupuncture and pharmacopuncture (herbal acupuncture) to ease tension and alertness that carry on into the night, and herbal medicine matched to your test results to help your body's rhythm recover. If you spend a long time lying awake in bed, we do bed retraining together too.

Third, we check by the time you fall asleep. Rather than how many hours you slept, we use the diary together to see whether the time you get sleepy and the time you fall asleep are moving earlier. We don't treat without evidence.

What changes

A morning when one alarm is enough. An evening when you start yawning naturally around 11 p.m. Being able to say you reset your clock, instead of hearing that you lack willpower.

That's what we aim for.

How fast the clock moves earlier differs from person to person, depending on how far it has shifted, your living conditions and the season.

Today's takeaway

If you fall asleep late and wake up late, start by changing your morning light. Morning light pulls the clock earlier, and evening light pushes it later. There isn't enough of that light indoors. It's outside your door.

There's just one thing to try tomorrow morning. As soon as you get up, even before washing your face, go outside and stand or walk for just 15 minutes. Then for a week, write one line a day: the time you fell asleep, the time you got up, and how long you were outside in the light in the morning. That record is the first map showing where your clock is set. We're open until 8:30 p.m. on weekdays, and on weekends and public holidays too.

The evidence for insomnia treatment is summarized in the director's column Waking up during the night is insomnia too.

For questions or appointments, message us in English through the messenger at the bottom right of the page, or call +82-53-716-1175.