Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.

In the last 12 months, the 5,000+ people in this tribe have been reading something the other 99% of health newsletters won’t cover – the science your GP hasn’t read. Here’s what’s in this week’s issue and why it matters.

• Why waking just one hour earlier is a brilliant idea
• How hitting your snooze button is not
• The neuroscience behind getting an epiphany in the shower
• Why your phone is the most dangerous thing in your bedroom before 9am
• And the surprising connection between morning light and your waistline

Have suggestions or something you’d love to see covered here? Help me better serve this vibrant community of health rebels and send me your feedback here.

Much love and sunshine, ☀️
Sandy xx

P.S. It’s time to share your wins!! If you’ve learnt something new or implemented an idea from The Rise and felt better for it – I’d love to hear from you. It’s time to celebrate the wins and how The Rise has helped you achieve your health goals. Hit reply and let me know.

Issue #113 • 29 March, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

Science Finally Answers: Is It Actually Better to Wake Up Early?

It may be no surprise to learn that our internal clocks shift significantly throughout our life. In particular, between the ages of 10 and 30, driven largely by hormonal changes, we find teenagers wired to sleep late, adults stabilising, and many older people becoming early risers again as melatonin levels naturally decline. As there probably aren’t many teenagers reading this newsletter, that means no-one here gets a pass out and is allowed to sleep in late. Here’s why:

Studies show that early risers are typically in better health both physically and mentally, while night owls carry a significantly higher risk of obesity, depression, and Type 2 diabetes. A landmark study drawing on data from 840,000 people found that shifting sleep time earlier by just one hour decreases the risk of major depression by 23%. Night owls are also as much as twice as likely to suffer from depression as early risers — regardless of how long they sleep — with insufficient sleep alone linked to memory loss, weakened immunity, and heart disease.

And before the emails start, the biggest villain here isn’t about being a night owl per se, it’s misalignment. Forcing your biology into a schedule it wasn’t built for, and chronically under-sleeping as a result, is where the real damage happens.

The decentralised wisdom? You don’t need to become a 5am warrior. Shifting your wake time 30–60 minutes earlier — consistently, including weekends, and stepping outside for natural light within the first 30 minutes is enough to start nudging your master clock. But if you want best practice? Being outside for sunrise is your gold standard.

Why Hitting Snooze Is the Worst Way to Start Your Day (Your REM Sleep Agrees)

Okay, hands up, who hit the snooze button this morning? 🙋‍♀️

You’re in very good company. A global study tracking 3 million nights found that the snooze button was pressed in nearly 56% of all sleep sessions — and those who caved spent an average of 11 minutes drifting in and out before actually getting up. Even more telling? Around 45% of people hit snooze on more than 80% of their mornings. That’s not an occasional treat. That’s a habit. And here’s why you should stop.

The problem with snooze buttons isn’t the extra minutes, it’s what you’re interrupting to get them. Those drowsy moments just before you wake are actually your richest sleep of the night, deep in REM, where your brain is busy consolidating memories, processing emotions, and restoring itself for the day ahead. Every time you hit snooze, you’re swapping that gold-standard sleep for fragmented, shallow dozing that leaves you groggier than if you’d just gotten up. And if you’re a serial snoozer? Research shows heavy users tend to have more erratic sleep schedules overall, which over time is linked to worse metabolic health and mood. Not exactly the morning vibe we’re going for.

The good news for us Aussies? People in Australia ranked amongst the lowest snooze button users globally – yay us! I love to see it so let’s keep that going.

The decentralised wisdom? Set your alarm for the latest time you can genuinely afford, then commit to getting up on the first ring. If you can’t quite jump out of bed, open your curtains to allow some morning light in and do some heavy lifting for you. It’s a surprisingly effective way to ease the transition without needing three alarms and a grudge.

Your Phone Is Not a Morning Person. Neither Is Your Brain When You Pick It Up.

You already know this. Somewhere deep down, you know that reaching for your phone before you’ve even fully opened your eyes isn’t doing you any favours. Now science has confirmed it, and the findings are more confronting than you might expect.

Researchers from Flinders University right here in South Australia studied what doomscrolling actually does to us psychologically. What they found was striking: habitual doomscrolling was directly linked to heightened anxiety, a growing distrust of other people, and a creeping sense that life lacks meaning. The researchers described it as a form of trauma, where your nervous system responds to the suffering you’re reading about as though it happened to you. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between witnessing something and scrolling past it at 6am.

What makes this so relevant for mornings specifically is the biology of that first waking hour. Your brain is in a vulnerable, permeable state, shifting from sleep to full wakefulness, and whatever you feed it first sets the emotional tone for everything that follows. Feeding it bad news, wars, corruption, increasing prices, and catastrophe before you’ve even had a glass of water is, to put it plainly, not a great strategy.

The decentralised wisdom? Sunlight before screen light, every single morning. Create a limit for yourself – no phone time until after 8am or for the first hour. You’ll be making a measurable difference to your hormonal and neurological starting point for your day. Your mood, your focus, and your sense of the world will all be better for it.

Theta Waves

You know that floaty, dreamy state just before you’re fully awake, when you’re not quite asleep, not quite alert, and thoughts seem to arrive from nowhere, unguarded and strangely brilliant? That’s not morning grogginess. That’s one of the most scientifically fascinating brain states you’ll experience all day. It has a name: theta.

Theta waves are the electrical patterns your brain produces when you’re in that sweet spot between deep sleep and full wakefulness, slower, softer, and far more creative than the busy alert state that takes over once the day kicks in. Children live in theta for much of their waking hours, which is part of why they learn so effortlessly and imagine so freely. As adults, we slip into theta during that dreamy transition from sleep to waking each morning, during deep meditation, and, here’s the part I find genuinely delightful, in the shower.

When warm water hits your skin, your body relaxes, your overthinking brain quiets down, and something wonderful happens in the background – your mind starts making unexpected connections, solving problems you didn’t even know you were working on, and surfacing ideas you couldn’t force at your desk. It’s why your best thinking happens mid-shampoo. So the next time you step out of the shower with a fully formed brainwave, a solution, an idea, a sudden moment of clarity, you can smile and think: that’s not a coincidence. That’s theta doing its thing.

Where things go sideways is when we eliminate these theta windows entirely. When we wake to an alarm, immediately grab the phone, and arrive at work already in high-alert beta mode, we skip the morning theta window altogether. We trade our most naturally integrative brain state for reactive, distracted pattern-matching.

Theta isn’t unproductive. It isn’t daydreaming. It’s your brain’s daily maintenance window and the more intentionally you protect it each morning, the sharper, calmer, and more creatively alive you’ll be for the rest of your day. Five minutes in the shower. Just let your brain wander. You’ll be amazed what shows up.

🍯 Short & Sweet

Still not convinced about light and mornings?

Rise and shine: How natural light lessens morning fatigue

Morning Rays Keep Off the Kilos

Top 10 Benefits of Waking Up Early

20–30 minutes: That’s all the morning light you need to influence your weight, and it works even on a cloudy day. People who get bright light before noon have significantly lower BMIs than those who don’t, independent of diet, exercise, and sleep. Step outside. It’s free.

Want to go deeper on light and your biology? The Solar Callus Blueprint is your complete guide to safely harnessing morning sun. You can grab it here. 

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and not intended as medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional for personal health decisions. This post may contain affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.