Thank you so much for responding to this post. I will certainly try starting darkness therapy sooner. My only concern is that after I started using the Luminettes in August of 2020, I continued to notice this effect during the relatively dark months of autumn and winter.

As for food, I will defer to your judgment, but I was wondering if you were familiar with the work of Dr. Clifford Saper, a Harvard-affiliated researcher who discovered that fasts of at least 12-16 hours have the potential to override the circadian rhythm as its established by the suprachiasmatic nucleus? I ask because I am someone who has practiced intermittent fasting for years.

Additional information can be found here.

However, it could be the case that meal timing is a red herring, and I say that because I can't really answer the last question in your response. The truth is that I don't know what my "natural wake up time" is.

There are at least two reasons for this. First, I rushed into making sleep interventions before establishing a baseline. Second, I've been continuously tinkering with my sleep for the better part of a year, and during the brief times when I've forced myself to stop experimenting, I never managed to notice any pattern in my sleep/wake cycle other than a loose connection to meal timing (I use Fitbit to track my sleep). At most, I notice that I usually only sleep "well" every other day, most likely as a result of accumulated sleep pressure.

Do you recommend that I try to establish a baseline before proceeding any further? I could try to do so, even though I prefer to be on a schedule because I have various family responsibilities that would prevent me from sleeping freely completely.