The Circadian Rhythm-Our Body's Internal Symphony of Which We Are The Conductor
This is one of those times I sit down to write, and I’m really anxious, excited and completely full of self doubt. Here’s why. I’m about to endeavor to write about something I believe to be incredibly important. Sure. Everything I write I find somewhat important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.
But this is one of those subjects that makes me say to myself, “Dude, get this right. This can really help people live a healthier life.”
That really stresses me out. Granted it’s all self inflicted. If I didn’t write this at all you’d likely not even notice. But I really want to get it right for both our sake. So here we go. Deep breath..go!
What is the circadian rhythm? Let’s start with the basic of the basics. Circadian comes from the Latin word circa which means “around”. Diem is Latin for “day.” Combine them and you have “circadian.” So your circadian rhythm is just a countenance of things that happen every day around a certain time.
When I first started looking into the circadian rhythm I was mainly interested in improved sleep. I thought our circadian rhythm was simply when we were supposed to be awake or asleep. If you went to bed and woke up at the same time with the proper amount of hours between your circadian rhythm was good. That’s not exactly the case.
It turns out we have three primary rhythms. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from your circadian rhythm is going to be very similar to mine. Think you’re an “early riser?” Think again. You may rise earlier than me. You might even be more productive during your waking hours. However, this is only a measure of one of your rhythms. You might be throwing your others off and causing long-term damage.
Circadian rhythms aide biological optimization. Ever wonder why a baby gets fussy when it’s tired or hungry? Ever wonder why when you wake really early and travel before your morning bowel movement you might end up not going all day? Well, amigo that’s because you’ve thrown your rhythm off.
The circadian clock is the internal timing system that interacts with the timing of light, food and movement to produce our daily rhythms. It’s up to us to maintain the rhythm.
Every living organism spends its 24 hour day doing the following:
Getting energy (food)
Optimizing energy use by using some for maintaining daily functioning and storing the rest for later use
Protecting itself from harmful agents and predators
Repairing itself or growing
Reproducting
These functions are all guided by a circadian clock that determines when our organs are best suited to meet these tasks.
Here’s a mind blower. Every organ has it’s own clock. Our body symphony doesn’t just have a horn section or a percussion section. It has many organs all with different roles to play and times to play them. Imagine if the orchasra had no conductor.
Novice listeners like me probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. However, someone who is acutely in tune with the music would know whether or not the orchestra is actually playing in harmony and keeping proper time. It’s the same with our body. All the instruments will play at the same time and eventually converge. However, if they don’t follow the sheet music properly it will just become a godawful collision of noise.
Here are the three core rhythms:
Sleep
Feeding window
Physical training
Sleep:
It’s no wonder my limited knowledge pointed me here via studying sleep. It’s such a huge factor in how our circadian rhythm performs. When we are babies our bodies are programmed to require 9 hours of sleep. By our thirties this number shortens to around 7 where we remain for the rest of adulthood.
However, the circadian clock like any other aging clock starts to lose time. This is why old people start to wake up about the time their college age grandchildren are going to bed. They have breakfast the night before, lunch for dinner and some saltines in milk for supper and they’re out by 6p.m.
Because of the impact of light, exercise and food intake to properly maintain a good sleep pattern we must optimize all the rest. We actually have hormones ready to work at certain times which perform specific functions.
For example, the sleep hormone melatonin starts to rise around 7-8 at night. If your melatonin is producing at the right time, you will be ready to nod off around 10 p.m.
I can hear you now. “Wait Jason. I’m a night owl. I just don’t get tired. I like to work until late into the night and sleep later in the morning.”
This is because you have conditioned your body through extended periods of blue light and other artificial lights. You have tricked your body into thinking it’s still daytime. However, if you put away your devices at around 7 p.m., lower the temperature of your house, dim the lights and refuse to check any more emails your body would soon learn it’s night and your conductor’s wand would wave in the melatonin and get you ready for a proper night’s sleep.
A note on sleep. Your body keeps count. Your body will actually keep a sleep debt account. This means if you require 7 hours of sleep and only get 6.5 your body remembers. It will add up all the sleep you miss. This is why we tend to sleep longer on the weekends. Our bodies are calling in the debt we accumulated during the week. It’s the same when we are on vacation. Our body recognizes the extra time available for sleep and takes advantage to call in the sleep debt.
Feeding Window:
For years scientist thought light was the only trigger of the circadian clock. They believed it mattered not when you fed as long as your body thought it was day it would do what it was supposed to do during the day. Then in 2009 a study was done on mice.
In one study scientists took mice, which are usually nocturnal, and fed them only during the day. Then they looked at their liver function. They saw that almost every liver gene that turns on and off within 24 hours completely tracked the food and ignored the timing of light exposure. This means that it is the food that reset the liver clock, not the brain.
This means the body syncs to other cues such as when we eat. This is why most people are hungry around the same time every morning. It’s important to maintain a steady rhythm.
Let’s say you decide to eat breakfast later than usual. Many of us do this on Sunday and call it brunch. The clocks in your stomach, liver, muscles, pancreas, etc., will take note of an unanticipated breakfast and will get confused. These clocks will think perhaps they are wrong and that it is 8:00 a.m. To make up for the “lost time,” the clocks in these organs will try to speed up. But your circadian clock has many moving parts, and it is not that easy to speed all the clocks in different organs so quickly and get them back into alignment. Usually ,they can adjust themselves by an hour per day.
When we eat impacts how much of our food will be stored versus burned. It’s not just what we eat that matter (I will discuss this much more in my upcoming class on immune centric health so stay tuned). It’s when we eat. Let’s say you haven’t eaten all day. You’ve been traveling. You may think, well hell I can crush Whataburger at 11 p.m. I haven’t eaten all day so it’s all good. Not so fast partner. You waited til after the kitchen closed to decide that you want that limited time only Buffalo Ranch Sandwich. This is going to throw everything off and what was meant to be burned is instead going to be stored as fat. Further, it’s going to effect the other circadian dominos and how they are stood up and knocked down the following day.
Suppose you had your dinner at 8 p.m. and you finished a half hour later. The clock is continuing to tick, your fat-making process is slowly winding down, and at around 10:30, you have an urge to snack. A piece of fruit, a bowl of cereal, a granola bar, a handful of nuts, it doesn’t matter. As soon as that food gets into your stomach, the stomach clock that already put the “kitchen is closed” sign up has to get back to work and process your snack. Let’s face it. A cook ready to call it quits is not who we want cooking our late night dinner.
That same food in the morning would have been processed in an hour or so, but now the stomach wasn’t prepared for the food, and it will take a few hours to process the snack. Your fat-making process continues past midnight and the fat-burning process won’t begin until the morning, but when you eat your breakfast, the switch turns again toward making fat.
So if you wonder why diets don’t always work even when you’re eating exactly what you should. Maybe you’re just eating at the wrong time. Start using your conductor skills a little better.
The Effect of Physical Activity:
Our lungs and heart are both muscles that have a circadian variation—we have a relatively higher heart rate and heavier breathing during the day, and both slow down at night. The higher heart rate and breathing help distribute oxygen and nutrients throughout our body, including to our muscles during the day, priming us for physical activity. At night our muscles don’t need the same levels of nutrients and oxygen as they do during the day, when we are more likely to use them. This may be one reason why heart rate and breathing slow down at nigh, which helps the body cool down so we can sleep better.
Physical activity improves sleep. In a study among teenagers, vigorous physical activity not only improves how quickly that fell asleep or how well they slept, it also improved their mood during the day, increased concentration, and reduced levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Among older adults (50-75) moderate physical activity or even regular stretching improved sleep onset, sleep quality and sleep duration and reduced dependence on sleep medications. Older adults with moderate physical activity also had fewer episodes of feeling sleepy during regular daytime activity. When the timing of our sleep improves, our circadian rhythm improves.
So what happens if you let the symphony play for too long with no conductor? As I said earlier the missed notes and ill timing might not be so noticed at first. However, the miscues will compound over time. Here’s what it will look like.
If you let the symphony play out of sync for long enough you will will increase the likelihood of:
Gut diseases, immune diseases, metabolic diseases, affective or mood diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, reproductive diseases, chronic inflammation and various cancers. The longer your circadian rhythm Is out of sync, the greater the risk of developing serious disease.
So now as we reach the crescendo of this little symphony, let me leave you with the following. This only scratches the surface. I wrote about this today because the more I learn about living in rhythm with my circadian code the more I’m obsessed with perfecting it for good health and longevity.
If you want to take your understanding to a new level you can download the my CircadianClock app. Full disclosure: I haven’t started using it yet but I just dowloaded. If you have any questions, please let me know. I want to continue my research on this important subject.