Association of Art & Science Rome, ITALY

Biorhythms (stop changing the clocks) 

  • Biorhythms

  • Disease and 'circadian' rhythms of muscle, liver and lung

  • The human body is precisely controlled by natural internal clocks, which maintain various circadian rhythms and homeostatic control. Unfortunately these can be put out of synchronization by travelling by plane (jet lag) or by governmental control e.g. daylight saving time and summer time and winter time etc. This puts the whole populations of Europe and America, forwards or backwards by one hour; it seems quite arbitrarily to save energy apparently. This causes huge amount of confusion and the logic of saving energy by such a strategy is beyond belief! The disorder in the circadian rhythms is responsible for various illnesses and general wellbeing.

    The people should be left to continue with their normal biological time clocks and the artificial time changes should NOT be forced upon anyone.

     

    Stop the Clock changes and live a life in rhythm with nature !


    Disease and 'circadian' rhythms of muscle, liver and lung

    Experiments involving rats suggest that the body's liver, muscles and lungs each have their own internal 'clocks'.

    And this could explain why jetlagged travellers, or workers changing shift patterns, can feel genuine aches and illnesses because of the time differences.

    The rat study, carried out by scientists in the US and Japan, and published in Science magazine, found that the internal 'circadian' rhythms of muscle, liver and lung can be thrown out of synchronisation with the main body circadian cycle.

    The researchers linked a fluorescing firefly protein to a key circadian clock gene in genetically modified rats, causing the rats' cells to emit light when the clock gene was activated.

    Jet lag induced

    The researchers then induced jet lag in the rats by fast-forwarding or delaying the light/dark cycles in the rats' environment and then studied the circadian activity in different tissues trying adjust to the change.

    The clock in the brain re-set itself within just one revolution of the circadian cycle, while the clocks in the muscle and lung took six cycles to re-set, and the liver took more than 16.

    It can cope with the subtle seasonal changes which reduce or increase the number of daylight hours - but cannot deal with sudden changes like those caused by transatlantic travel.

    So even if the main cycle has been reset to a different time zone, the liver may still be functioning out of step.

    However, it is not certain how accurately circadian rhythms in rats reflect those in humans.

    As well as fatigue, jetlagged people can often have upset stomachs and aching muscles.

    The researchers estimated that up to 20% of the US workforce is exposed to these abrupt day to night or night to day shift changes.

    Dr Mary Morrell, a lecturer in sleep physiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London, said that passengers flying long-haul across time zones often complained of gastric symptoms.

    "There has been a lot of discussion about whether these separate parts of the body have their own circadian cycles, and this is more evidence to support it."

    She added that the trial would be extremely difficult to replicate in humans, as it would involve keeping them in almost unethical conditions.

    Stop the Clock changes and live a life in rhythm with nature !

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