In the October of 2017 three scientists: Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young were awarded the Nobel Prize for discoveries about the molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s circadian rhythm.

The Circadian Rhythm, also known as the body clock, has often been overlooked as unimportant, but as time goes on, emerging evidence is now encouraging clinicians and scientists to study it further and utilize it to help patients, and to advance our knowledge about the human body (and other living organisms too). This post will make you aware of the many living clocks that can be found in your body and how to make the best of them.

The circadian rhythm plays a role in allowing those, like many of our grandparents, who have a fixed schedule, live longer, healthier and happier lives, and it plays a role in the emergence of health problems like obesity, diabetes and depression in those who tend to have more fluid schedules.

The circadian rhythm was discovered when scientists were surprised to find that plants that bloomed in sunlight maintained their blooming schedule even after they were put inside a dark room. Such rhythms were also later found in the single celled organism:  maintained their tidal migration patterns even in the absence of tides (they’re so small, they don’t have a brain). And they’ve been recently found in jellyfish too.

There is an optimal time for everything including eating, sleeping, and taking medicines.

Humans too have such rhythms, in fact they have not just one, but many of them operating simultaneously in the body. This fact implies that there is an optimal time for everything including eating, sleeping, and taking medicines.

Research has shown that taking blood pressure medication early in the day makes it more effective in controlling BP, and that taking it later can be dangerous. This is the reason why most heart attacks happen in the morning. Every morning your body automatically increases the level of cortisol and temperature among other things that make you more active during the daytime. If you miss taking your blood pressure medicine before this time, you may be at a higher risk of heart attack. (But you should always follow your doctor’s advice above all – because different medicines and bodies work differently)

The circadian rhythm also has a big impact on weight loss. It has been found that eating meals at irregular timings can result in weight gain and other health problems. This is because, among many other factors, the liver has its own clock which determines when it will release insulin. This can result in food being stored as fat rather than being used by the body.

But we haven’t yet talked about the strongest rhythm yet – one that can cause your immunity to drop, in turn inviting a lot of other problems: Sleep. We see no shortage of people who complain of feeling fatigued all the time, that they fall sick very easily, and that they’re always feeling irritated. The culprit usually is that they don’t have a fixed sleep schedule. Most of them, we noticed, often stay up late on many days of the week with no fixed bedtime and they sleep until very late on weekends. The rhythm of sleep is the difficult change, and if you’re changing your sleep timings every day, then your body fails to get the rest it needs. Less sleep leads to less immunity, irritation, fatigue, obesity and depression too.

A concrete breakthrough has now been made into this subject. It's nice to see this aspect of our bodies under the spotlight because it will open a lot of new and efficient ways to eliminate health problems.

Here are some concrete tips that you can start utilizing today to improve your health and get your lifestyle in sync with your body’s circadian rhythm:

1.      Follow a fixed sleep schedule

2.      Don’t eat late at night

3.      Don’t use your phone before bedtime

4.      Don’t sleep during the day

And the simplest and most important of all:

Follow a fixed schedule everyday and your body will adapt accordingly.

Interesting Fact: In ancient Jain texts and other Indian texts it is mentioned about effect of time, tithis (Indian calendar date), seasons & nakshatras on health. Indian calendars are developed on this. According to that food is also prescribed. Whatever changes takes place according to time: day, night, low tide, high tide and tithis (Indian calendar date), our body’s functions, secretions and all biological timings gets adjusted according to that.