In casual conversation, the “biological clock” is often referred to when starting a family but officially, our biological clocks, or our circadian rhythms, are how our bodies know when to go to sleep at night and when to wake up in the morning. With a few notable exceptions (hospital staff comes to mind, as does the populous of those in far Nordic countries), most of us live lives in which we work at day and sleep at night, loosely following the rise and setting of the sun. However, as any insomniac can tell you, it’s also super easy for our circadian rhythms to go off-kilter.

When they are off, is it possible to reboot our biological clocks? And if so, how should we go about doing it?

Though one McGill University study found a form of steroids might do the trick, a more recent study proves a weekend in the wild might work just as well, if not better. Scientists discovered that the human melatonin rhythm (melatonin is a hormone that helps control your sleep/wake cycles) adapts to short summer and long winter nights when living in a natural light-dark cycle — something that was long assumed but never officially proven.

“Our master brain clock (or biological clock), which tells us when to go to bed and awaken, when to eat and when to be active, is very sensitive to light,” explains Kenneth P. Wright Jr., Ph.D., professor, Department of Integrative Physiology, Director of Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder, and co-author of the study. “Morning exposure to light and increased exposure to sunlight shifts the master clock earlier.”