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Aligning with Circadian Hormones for Energy and Wellbeing

Introduction: The Body’s 24-Hour Hormone Clock

Our bodies run on an internal 24-hour (ish) clock (the circadian rhythm) that orchestrates the release of key hormones throughout the day and night. The master pacemaker in the brain (the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN) sends timing signals that cause hormones to surge or dip regularly. These hormonal rhythms profoundly influence our daily energy levels, cognition, mood, behaviour and metabolism. The Body-clock Workbook is your deeper more practical dive into all of this. 

When our internal hormone cycles align with our daily schedule, we feel energised, focused and balanced. Conversely, if our lifestyle clashes with these natural rhythms (due to poor sleep, irregular routines, or shift work) we can experience fatigue, brain fog, mood disturbances, or metabolic issues. The Day Crafting approach – designing your day in harmony with the body’s clock – builds on these insights, by understanding when each hormone naturally peaks or troughs, we can craft our daily activities (work, exercise, meals, rest) to align with our biology for better performance and wellbeing.

Below, is (my non-expert) profile the major circadian hormones and how they fluctuate through the day. For each, I describe its role, daily high and low points, effects of rhythm disruptions and practical Day Crafting tips. Keep in mind: individual timing can vary (your chronotype might shift these patterns earlier or later), but the general cycle of each hormone remains consistent. Use the information as a guide to tune into your rhythm – like an apprentice honing a craft, you can observe your daily highs and lows and gradually adjust your schedule to fit your internal cues. Let’s dive into the hormones of the day and see how to partner with them.

Cortisol: The Morning Alertness Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Cortisol is the classic wake-up hormone, driving alertness and energy by rising before dawn and peaking early (~8–9 AM). After this, it steadily declines, reaching its lowest at night. It helps mobilise energy, raises blood sugar, and is a daily activator, syncing metabolism and brain with daytime activity. There’s a distinct surge soon after waking and sometimes small bumps after meals, but the main story is an intense morning peak and an evening trough.

Misalignment Effects:
When cortisol’s natural cycle is disrupted by stress, late nights, or shift work, you’ll feel it: trouble sleeping, evening anxiety and fatigue in the morning. Chronic misalignment (like night-shift work) flattens the cortisol curve, causing poor concentration, mood swings, and immune issues. A dulled peak means grogginess; a high at night means you’re tired but wired and can’t rest. Over time, this can increase weight gain, worsen memory and blunt your resilience.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Morning Focus: Schedule important mental tasks for the morning when cortisol is highest. Most people find the late morning is their productivity window.
  • Delay Caffeine: Wait about 90 minutes after waking to have caffeine. This lets cortisol do its thing first and avoids the post-caffeine crash.
  • Evening Wind Down: Support low nighttime cortisol with a calming pre-bed routine (dim lights, relaxing activities, minimal stress). If you feel “tired-and-wired” at night, cortisol is probably elevated.
  • Track Your Energy: Journal your energy or mood in the morning, afternoon and night. Over weeks, patterns will emerge and can guide your schedule.
  • Resetting: For odd hours or all-nighters, get natural light in the morning and maintain a regular bedtime to restore rhythm.

Melatonin: The Nighttime Sleep Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Melatonin is the hormone of night, rising 1–2 hours before bedtime as darkness falls and peaking in the middle of the night. Its main job is to make you sleepy, keep you asleep and coordinate your body clock with the day-night cycle. When daylight hits your eyes, melatonin production drops rapidly, staying low through the day until the following evening.

Misalignment Effects:
Exposure to light at night (especially screens or bright indoor lights) suppresses melatonin, making it harder to fall and stay asleep. Irregular sleep patterns or shift work can leave melatonin blunted or mistimed, resulting in insomnia, fatigue, and impaired mood. Chronic disruption is linked to higher rates of depression and even increased risk for some diseases. When melatonin doesn’t match your intended sleep schedule, you’ll feel unrested and less resilient.

Melatonin isn’t just the sleep hormone; it’s also produced in the gut, where it helps regulate digestive motility, including the daily rhythm of bowel movements. Here’s the main gist:

  • Gut clock: The intestines and colon have their circadian rhythm, heavily influenced by melatonin.
  • Melatonin and motility: Melatonin slows gut movement at night (partly why you’re unlikely to need a poo at 3 AM). Its drop in the morning (as light switches melatonin off) that allows gut activity to ramp up, hence, for many people, the morning constitutional.
  • Practical upshot: A strong melatonin rhythm supports regular, predictable bowel habits. Disrupt melatonin (jet lag, night shifts, screens late at night), and your gut may get as confused as your brain, leading to constipation, irregularity, or the dreaded holiday tummy.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Evening Dim-Down: Dim lights and avoid screens 1–2 hours before bedtime.
  • Morning Light: Expose yourself to bright light soon after waking.
  • Track Drowsiness: When you naturally feel sleepy in the evening, your melatonin kicks in.
  • Keep It Dark: Make your bedroom as dark as possible and avoid bright lights if you wake at night.
  • Mood & Melatonin: Evening mood dips might relate to the melatonin rhythm; try soothing activities before bed.

Growth Hormone (GH): The Overnight Repair Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Growth hormone drives tissue repair, fat metabolism, and physical renewal, with the largest bursts occurring at night during deep sleep (especially the first half of the night, around 2–4 AM). GH is secreted in pulses, but about two-thirds of daily release happens during early sleep; levels are minimal in the day.

Misalignment Effects:
Poor or erratic sleep severely reduces GH output. Missing deep sleep blunts the nighttime surge, slowing recovery, muscle repair, and even memory. Shift workers and chronic late-nighters produce less GH, leading to weaker immune function, slower healing and more body fat. Long-term, GH misalignment can sap your physical and mental resilience.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Prioritise Deep Sleep: Protect your sleep quality and duration. Consistent bedtimes help.
  • Support Deep Sleep: Cool, dark, quiet bedroom; avoid stimulants and heavy meals before bed.
  • Sync Exercise: Strength training or HIIT in the late afternoon can align with GH pulses.
  • Track Recovery: Notice how you feel after physically demanding days; poor recovery hints at disrupted GH.
  • Eat Early: Avoid heavy meals late; late eating can blunt the GH surge.

Thyroid Hormones (TSH & T3/T4): The Metabolic Pacers

Role and Daily Pattern:
Thyroid hormones regulate metabolism, body temperature, and brain function. T3 and T4 levels are steady, but TSH (which triggers their release) rises at night, peaking around midnight, and dips to its lowest late afternoon. This gives a subtle nudge to nighttime metabolism and keeps you running smoothly by day.

Misalignment Effects:
A flipped or irregular sleep schedule can shift or blunt the TSH rhythm, giving inconsistent metabolic signals. Chronic misalignment can produce symptoms resembling mild thyroid disruption—feeling colder at odd times, energy crashes, or sluggish metabolism. Over the years, this pattern can increase the risk of thyroid dysfunction, especially under high stress or sleep deprivation.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Routine: Keep a steady daily schedule for thyroid health.
  • Morning Movement: Light exercise and a good breakfast help metabolism.
  • Avoid Late Feasts: Heavy meals late at night tax a slowing metabolism.
  • Temperature Awareness: Monitor your body temp for circadian patterns.
  • Stress Management: Chronic stress can lower thyroid function.

Leptin: The Satiety and Energy-Balance Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Leptin is the body’s fullness gauge, rising at night to suppress appetite and keep metabolism steady through fasting. It peaks overnight and drops to its lowest in the late afternoon, helping hunger return by evening. Sleep and meal timing influence leptin’s pattern.

Misalignment Effects:
Too little sleep or erratic hours lowers leptin and raises ghrelin (the hunger hormone), leaving you hungrier and more prone to cravings. Chronic disruption can flatten leptin’s rhythm, making you less sensitive to fullness and promoting weight gain. Over time, leptin resistance can develop, especially in those with disordered sleep or shift work.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Prioritise Sleep: Good sleep supports appetite control.
  • Sync Meals: Front-load calories during the day, avoid late-night snacking.
  • Journal Appetite: Spot patterns of hunger and fullness.
  • Smart Exercise Timing: Morning exercise can blunt appetite for some; late afternoon may help manage evening cravings.

Ghrelin: The Hunger Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Ghrelin is the “hunger” hormone, rising as the stomach empties and peaking in the late afternoon or evening. It’s lowest in the morning and falls after meals, but its circadian rhythm means you’ll naturally feel hungriest as the day winds down.

Misalignment Effects:
Sleep deprivation or inconsistent meal timing raises ghrelin, increasing appetite and cravings (especially for carbs and sweets). Night shift or erratic sleep can scramble ghrelin’s pattern, leading to hunger at odd hours and overeating. In the long term, this increases the risk of weight gain, poor concentration, and mood swings.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Regular Meal Times: Eat meals at consistent times.
  • Honour Hunger: Eat when genuinely hungry, not by the clock alone.
  • Handle Evening Cravings: Have a plan for nighttime hunger (small, protein-based snacks if needed).
  • Move to Distract: A Short activity can help curb hunger pangs.
  • Hunger Journal: Track patterns and adjust as needed.

Insulin and Blood Sugar: Metabolic Rhythm of Day and Night

Role and Daily Pattern:
Insulin manages blood sugar, but your body’s insulin sensitivity is highest in the morning and falls throughout the day, becoming lowest at night. You handle carbs best early, with higher insulin release and better glucose uptake in the morning.

Misalignment Effects:
Eating large or sugary meals late at night or on an irregular schedule raises blood sugar and impairs metabolism. Chronic misalignment or night eating can contribute to insulin resistance, weight gain, and even type 2 diabetes. Even a few nights of poor sleep can raise fasting blood sugar and blunt insulin response.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Big Breakfast, Small Dinner: Front-load food to the day.
  • Fasting Window: Aim for at least 12 hours overnight without eating.
  • Move After Meals: Walking after meals blunts blood sugar spikes.
  • Track: Tech (like CGMs) can help you see your patterns.

Testosterone: The Daily Motivation and Vitality Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Testosterone peaks early to mid-morning (about 7–10 AM), supporting energy, motivation, muscle strength and libido. It declines through the day, reaching its lowest in the evening, before rising again overnight in sleep.

Misalignment Effects:
Chronic poor sleep or irregular schedules blunt testosterone’s rhythm, reducing daily peaks. This leads to lower motivation, weaker physical performance, and decreased libido in men, especially those who may feel less vigorous or assertive. Over time, this can sap mood, cognitive sharpness, and body composition.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Morning Tasks: Do your most assertive or physically demanding work in the morning.
  • Strength Training: Late morning/early afternoon is good.
  • Protect Sleep: Deep sleep = testosterone.
  • Track Morning Feelings: Notice changes with routine tweaks.
  • Work With the Dips: Use mellow afternoon energy for social or creative tasks.

Prolactin: The Nighttime Rest and Recovery Hormone

Role and Daily Pattern:
Prolactin rises at night, peaking during sleep and dropping throughout the day. It’s nighttime surge helps with rest, recovery, and calmness. Levels are highest in the early morning hours and quickly fall after waking.

Misalignment Effects:
Disrupted or shortened sleep reduces prolactin release, leaving you less refreshed and potentially lowering immune function and emotional resilience. Chronic sleep disruption fragments prolactin’s rhythm, making you feel unrested, with subtle mood and motivation dips. High stress or certain medications can also blunt prolactin, affecting both sleep and recovery.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Continuous Sleep: Avoid broken nights.
  • Use Prolactin’s Calm: Evening intimacy or relaxation practices can boost sleepiness.
  • Track Grogginess: Waking naturally helps avoid that high-prolactin fog.
  • Watch for Imbalance: Persistent fatigue or mood issues may hint at disrupted rhythms.

Adrenaline & Noradrenaline: The Daytime Spark Plugs

Role and Daily Pattern:
These “spark plug” hormones rise during the day to boost alertness, drive, and physical readiness, and fall at night during sleep. Sympathetic activity is highest during active daytime and lowest at night, with a morning surge to help you wake.

While many hormones quietly follow the body-clock’s timetable, noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine) is different, it’s more like the body’s rapid-response team, mobilising energy and focus as needed throughout the day. Rather than passively peaking and troughing in sync with the circadian rhythm, noradrenaline is primarily action-driven: its levels surge in response to physical activity, stress, excitement, or even just standing up quickly. This means you have some direct control: feeling sluggish in the early afternoon or foggy after lunch isn’t just the clock; a brisk walk, splashing your face with cold water, or even a burst of laughter can spike noradrenaline and sharpen your alertness within minutes. While there is a general pattern of higher sympathetic activity (and thus noradrenaline) during the active daylight hours and a dip at night, its fluctuations are much more closely tied to what you do than to an automatic schedule. In short, noradrenaline is the “hackable” hormone: if your brain or body needs a reboot, you can often trigger it yourself, making it a unique outlier in the orchestra of daily hormones.

Misalignment Effects:
If you’re active when your body expects rest (e.g., late-night stress or workouts), adrenaline remains high, disturbing sleep and recovery. Chronic circadian disruption keeps the sympathetic system elevated, raising risks for hypertension, anxiety, poor digestion, and burnout. Not enough daytime activity can leave you sluggish, while nighttime over-activation leads to insomnia and fatigue.

Day Crafting Tips:

  • Morning Activation: Quick activity or cold showers after waking.
  • Afternoon Downtime: Build in short breaks to avoid burnout.
  • Evening Deactivation: Reduce stimulation at night (no horror movies before bed).
  • Breathe: Use breathwork to manage stress and regulate your system.

Ultradian Pulse-Map: What Your Hormones Do Every Hour While You’re Busy Being Fabulous

What we mean by ultradian. An ultradian rhythm is anything shorter than 24 h (think 20 min – 12 h). Your circadian clock sets the stage, but under that 24-hour power-ballad, there’s a tight drum-beat of hourly-ish hormone pulses that keep receptors sharp, fine-tune metabolism and shape the ebb-and-flow of energy, focus, and mood.

Key hormonal ultradian rhythms worth crafting around

Hormone (period) Why the pulses matter Day Crafting leverage
Cortisol (60–120 min) Each spike triggers alertness, memory encoding, and immune tweaks Ride peaks for intense work, insert micro-recovery (stretch, breathwork) in dips
GH (~3 h) Pulses drive protein synthesis and repair Strength training before a main pulse (late afternoon), naps for midday pulse
LH & reproductive axis (hourly, 24–48h pre-ovulation) Pulse frequency signals ovulation; skin-temp & HRV match waves Log temp/HRV waves, protect peak-energy windows
Insulin/Glucose (5–15 min, nested 50–120 min) Stable pulses = sensitive receptors Cluster carbs, avoid constant grazing
Noradrenaline (40 min, 80–90 min peaks) Coordinates “get-up-and-go”; coupled to activity and feeding Movement snacks at 80-minute slots
Prolactin, Dopamine, Ghrelin (1–4 h) Modulate motivation, satiety, reward Spot treat cravings as dopamine troughs, seek daylight/novelty instead

The 90-minute BRAC (Basic Rest-Activity Cycle): Kleitman’s classic 90-minute focus/rest rhythm shows up in sleep but is messy in waking. Most people have an 85–110 min personal wave; guard your crest for deep work, then take 10–15 min for a break.

Insulin & Ultraradian Glucose Pulses: Your blood sugar isn’t a flat line; it pulses every 5‑15 minutes and cycles harder over 50–120 minutes. That just one more biscuit isn’t willpower, it’s your pancreas screaming for feed time. Cluster carbs and shut the grazing down.

Cortisol’s micro‑pulses: It’s not just your morning boost, cortisol also spikes roughly every 60–120 minutes all day. Every time it pings, you get a miniburst of alertness. If you're catastrophising at 2 PM, you may have just hit a cortisol micro‑peak. Breathe, it’ll pass.

Putting pulses into a Day Crafting blueprint

  • Map your ultradian signals for a week (rate focus every 30 min).
  • Design 90-minute blocks with 10-minute decompression.
  • Stack tasks to pulse physiology (deep work in peaks, admin in troughs).
  • Respect night pulses: deep sleep and cool temps for sharp mornings.
  • Tweak for menstrual cycle phase (see section for specifics).

Menstrual Infradian Rhythm Cheat-Sheet

The menstrual cycle, an infradian rhythm, spans approximately 28 days and consists of four distinct phases, each characterised by unique hormonal fluctuations that influence energy, mood, metabolism and cognitive function. Understanding these phases can aid in optimising daily activities.

1. Menstrual Phase (Days 1–5)

  • Hormones: Estrogen and progesterone levels are at their lowest.
  • Energy & Mood: Often a time of low energy and introspection.
  • Supportive Activities: Engage in restful practices, gentle movement like yoga or walking, and prioritise sleep.

2. Follicular Phase (Days 6–14)

  • Hormones: Estrogen begins to rise, stimulating follicle development.
  • Energy & Mood: Increased energy, improved mood, and heightened creativity.
  • Supportive Activities: Ideal for initiating new projects, engaging in high-intensity workouts, and social activities.

3. Ovulatory Phase (Days 15–17)

  • Hormones: Peak in estrogen and a surge in luteinizing hormone trigger ovulation.
  • Energy & Mood: Optimal energy levels, enhanced communication skills, and confidence.
  • Supportive Activities: Schedule important meetings, presentations, and collaborative work.

4. Luteal Phase (Days 18–28)

  • Hormones: Progesterone rises to prepare for potential pregnancy; if not, progesterone and estrogen levels decline.
  • Energy & Mood: May experience decreased energy, mood fluctuations, and cravings.
  • Supportive Activities: Focus on completing tasks, engage in moderate exercise, and incorporate stress-reducing practices.

For Further Reading

The Practice

Conclusion: Crafting Your Day with Biological Insight

Our hormones are like an internal orchestra playing a daily symphony, cortisol’s rousing morning melody, melatonin’s gentle nocturne, and all the supporting players creating a harmonious rhythm. Can you see how to bring more harmony into your days? Can you Prepare ahead of changes to your normal blueprints and spot the dangers? 

Observe your natural highs and lows, then design your schedule to work with them, not against them. Try tweaking one cue at a time: wake/sleep, meal timing, and light exposure and note the effects. The reward: better mood, more energy, and a real sense of flow in daily life. It might be for you, rigid schedules or creative self-experimentation, guided by science and lived experience. Here’s to a better-crafted day.

Written by Bruce Stanley on Fri, April 25, 2025

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