Our Circadian Rhythm or When Time Turns Into Clock

We will now discuss the powers Saturn and chronobiology. Circadian clock, our biological rhythms and accordance to seasonal rhythm, and the nature of time - these are the topics that have certainly had too little attention in our understanding of healing, health and wellness.

So, let's improve that mishap and here you will be able to read some of the knowledge put together and so read about your own rhythms, seasonal harmonics and perhaps can pick up on some of the guidance offered.

Also, thank you, Trinity Fisher, for suggesting the second part of the title. Thank you for all who are reading and for all who are understanding

Understanding the basic laws of natural rhythm lead me to write this post because I've gained much greater clarity about my own life, how the body and mind operates through these cycles and these bits and bites of knowledge have lead me to certainly make some improvements within the daily living.

The Introduction to Chronobiological Rhythm

Our bodies and minds follow a certain time-dependent rhythmic law. This law is seen and is evident within the quite regular patterns of our hormone fluctuations, within our cell metabolism changes, within our heart rhythm. Completely disobeying or neglecting these laws leads us to a logical outcome of often becoming imprisoned within our bodies or our minds.

Such imprisonments can be seen for example when we have chosen to neglect our natural sleep-wake cycles to be more productive. After a while of practicing this behaviour we tend to loose the ability of having a normal sleeping pattern. Thus, our productivity will be eventually even less than before and we have to start focusing most of our energy to return to some kind of acceptable rhythm.

These examples seem like a description of a standard adolescent behavior, indeed. However, so many of us keep up the adolescent behavior up for most of our life. It is time to start taking the times and rhythms and chronobiology more seriously, it is time to start appreciating the adult life and its responsibilities and freedoms.

Let There Be Light

Shortly, the sunlight improves the serotonin levels and production of D-vitamin. Of course the sunlight has many other regulatory roles to play in our daily living and because this topic has been

The less known through is that melatonin, the hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, has a part to play in deep sleep phase and regulates metabolism and is produced by our pineal gland, is also very sensitive to light and dark and reacts differently to different spectrum of light. For example, there have been studies that demonstrate how exposure to the blue spectrum of light (460 nm) is inhibiting melatonin at a significantly higher rate comparing to exposure to 555 nm light (warm red spectrum). Another study even showed how cold/blue spectrum light inhibits midnight melatonin release is 7-fold comparing to the warm spectrum. That might be one of the causes of seasonal or winter depression, daytime sleepiness and reduced metabolism

Keeping these processes in mind, it would be wise to changes most of those blue spectrum lights into much warmer ones. The most important time to have a darker and warmer light environment is about 1-2 hours before sleep time. Also, keep in mind that our nature is used to gradual sunsets and hose peaceful downs. There are special lights available that mimic the sun spectrum and gradually become lighter or darker so that you could ease into the sleep and gradually wake up. Since I started to use one of those, the whole sleeping pattern got better.

Eurhythmic State of Being

Professor dr. Maximilian Moser touches the topic of eurhythmics in many of his books. No, it is not about the band.... A branch of anthroposophistic therapy is focused on eurhythmics which essentially focuses on regaining and rebalancing exercise of personal and natural harmonious rhythms. These therapies are told to be specifically beneficial for difficult behavioral patterns, attention deficit disorder and for gaining more harmony for the people having autism spectrum disorders.

Why it seems that we need to look deeper into the harmonious rhythm of our own being is the fact that cancer cells have lost the normal circadian rhythm that most healthy cells have. Bringing in the analogies, our lack of responsibility in honoring the natural rhythm may lead to cancer. Perhaps in some terms also to our own cancerous behavior?

Ayurveda and the Seasons

According to Ayurvedic understanding, seasons carry also the basic constitutional nature of the dosha. Ayurveda describes three seasons: late far to the middle of the winter is governed by Vata dosha, the coldest and darkest part of the winter into the middle of the spring is Kapha, and the hottest part of the spring into the early fall is Pitta.

In that understanding, one has to look into their main dosha or doshas and the behaviors of your consitution will be balanced out or have a tendency to be aggravated according to what dosha runs the seasons. If you are an imbalanced Vata and it is a Vata season, your natural imbalances tend to be aggravated so one has to look into that more possible

Although trying to find more evidence to that aspect is rather difficult, it makes sense why the ancient tribes were paying a lot attention to the adequate seasonal behavior

We know that many infectious disease have a seasonal nature and there are researches that show how the clinical outcomes of hospital patients and length of stay in hospital varies according to the seasons. We possibly need to research more into the seasons and aggravation of chronic diseases.

Disturbances of the clock and possible improvements

Many links have been found between the disturbance of the circadian rhythm and thyroid disorders, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and many other disturbances.

But let's not go deep into the disturbances and rather discuss what can be done to improve these disturbances.

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time"

-Leo Tolstoy

I would also say the two ways to health are improving immunity and knowing about your time rhythms :)

Firstly, be fully awake when you are awake and sleep when it is time to sleep. Here are some other mild suggestions

• consider to changing your lamps into a warmer spectrum lamp (550 nm)

• consider logging in your sleep time hours and appointing exact times for meals

• try to find time for maximal light exposure during the day

• consider taking melatonin before bed if you are having sleeping issues

• exercising regularly at the same time helps with metabolic synchronization and improves sleep

• learn about your chronotype

• notice the season, the daily and weekly patterns in your life

Thank You for reading!

References

• Vom richtigen Umgang mit der Zeit: Die heilende Kraft der Chronobiologie by Maximilan Moser, 2017

• George C. Brainard, John P. Hanifin, Jeffrey M. Greeson et al, Action Spectrum for Melatonin Regulation in Humans: Evidence for a Novel Circadian Photoreceptor, JNEUROSCI.21-16-06405.2001 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/21/16/6405

• Dauchy RT, Hoffman AE, Wren-Dail MA, et al. Daytime Blue Light Enhances the Nighttime Circadian Melatonin Inhibition of Human Prostate Cancer Growth. Comp Med. 2015;65(6):473-485.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4681241/

• Argha, Ahmadreza & Savkin, Andrey & Liaw, Siaw-Teng & Celler, B.G.. (2018). Effect of Seasonal Variation on Clinical Outcome in Patients with Chronic Conditions: Analysis of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) National Telehealth Trial. JMIR Medical Informatics. 6. e16. 10.2196/medinform.9680. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323817623_Effect_of_Seasonal_Variation_on_Clinical_Outcome_in_Patients_with_Chronic_Conditions_Analysis_of_the_Commonwealth_Scientific_and_Industrial_Research_Organization_CSIRO_National_Telehealth_Trial

• Martinez ME. The calendar of epidemics: Seasonal cycles of infectious diseases. PLoS Pathog. 2018;14(11):e1007327. Published 2018 Nov 8. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1007327 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6224126/

• Ayurveda für jeden Tag; dr. med. Ernst Schrott, 2003

• Stenvers, D.J., Scheer, F.A.J.L., Schrauwen, P. et al. Circadian clocks and insulin resistance. Nat Rev Endocrinol15, 75–89 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41574-018-0122-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0122-1

• Ikegami, K., Refetoff, S., Van Cauter, E. et al. Interconnection between circadian clocks and thyroid function. Nat Rev Endocrinol15, 590–600 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41574-019-0237-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-019-0237

• Dodson ER, Zee PC. Therapeutics for Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorders. Sleep Med Clin. 2010;5(4):701-715. doi:10.1016/j.jsmc.2010.08.001 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020104/