You don’t need to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go.”
Yogi Berra
My son became interested in music when, in middle school, he was introduced to the tuba. He was small, so lugging such a large instrument around was a challenge—he even needed to sit on a telephone book to play it. As parents, my husband and I were skeptical, but his music teacher insisted that he showed a natural talent for the instrument. Practices, both at home and with his tutor, were an odd affair compared to the other instruments he had tried. Sequestered in his room, there would be long periods of silence followed by a few short notes or, at other times, extended resonant melodies. At first, I assumed the silence meant he had stopped practicing and was playing Nintendo, but peeking into his room, there he sat with a tuba in his lap, studying a sheet of music. He explained that he was playing the other instruments in his head, practicing his parts at the appropriate time. The notes he played while practicing made sense only when I heard it in a concert where they blended into the entire piece, synchronized with the other instruments. When played as part of the orchestra, those short bursts and low, slow deep tones added a richness to the piece at exactly the right moment.
The systems in our bodies work in a way that is similar to the individual instruments in an orchestra. Like the contributions of percussion, bass, and strings, each physiological system contributes to the smooth functioning of the body in a specific way. Our health reflects how well these systems—the heart, liver, digestion, respiration, etc.—work together as a coordinated, synchronized whole. Like the instruments in an orchestra, if one section is off or does not sound quite right, the entire piece will be affected. Each instrument contributes to the whole, just as each body system supports the other. And, like an orchestra, the perfect synchronization of all these parts is a product of the conductor, which, in the body, is known as the circadian clock.
The circadian clock, our body’s conductor, was discovered in the 1970’s when scientists discovered that the body cycles through a daily rhythm of wakefulness and sleep that is controlled by an area in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This structure, located in the hypothalamus, governs the release of hormones that make us alert during the day and sleepy at night. The suprachiasmatic nucleus responds to information related to external light, which it receives from specialized cells in the retina. During the day, light levels signal the SCN to activate hormones that will ramp up metabolism, increase body temperature, and elevate blood pressure. As the day shifts into night and ambient light wanes, the SCN shifts to activate hormones that slow us down, lowering body temperature, metabolism, and blood pressure to prepare us for sleep.
Research in the past two decades has discovered that the clock in our brain is not the only one in our body. We now know there are several clocks that regulate various physiological systems, including the skin, liver, kidney, lungs, muscles, reproduction, and the immune system. Each clock syncs to the SCN, much like the individual sections of an orchestra follow a conductor. But, unlike an orchestra, these clocks can also operate independently, making individual adjustments based on information received both from the environment and other systems. This information is sent to the SCN, causing it to adjust its timing to the changes in that particular system. For example, your liver has its own clock that determines when to increase your metabolism based on when you eat. Eating at midnight, a time when the SCN has coordinated the release of hormones that decrease metabolism, sends conflicting information back to the brain and other organ systems. This lack of coordination throws our physiology out of whack, creating a kind of internal chaos that can lead to insomnia, exhaustion, heart irregularity, and weight gain.
Circadian rhythms are important to more than just sleep. Ancient healing practices, such as those used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, have long emphasized the need to synchronize treatments with biological cycles. But Western medicine has been slow to embrace the idea that when a treatment is implemented might be just as important as the medicine itself. This reluctance may reflect our society’s relationship with time. Modernized lifestyles encourage us to, as some have said, “live our lives on our wrists”, referring to the artificial, arrhythmic version of time that rules our lives rather than the cycles of rest and activity found in nature. Our 24-7 culture encourages us to bend the body’s needs to the demands of our desired schedules, but a growing body of evidence shows that we do so at our own peril. Epidemiological studies correlate the rise of chronic and inflammatory diseases in modernized societies with the introduction and subsequent rise in the use of electricity. By lighting up the night and extending the day to support our artificial version of time, we continuously dysregulate our natural rhythms, gradually chipping away at our health and well-being.
Western medicine is finally taking notice of circadian rhythms, especially as more research emerges about the role sleep plays in the development of chronic diseases, mental health, and aging. But circadian rhythms are about much more than just sleep; science is showing they play a broader role that is more closely related to energy levels rather than just slumber. Making things more complicated, it seems we also experience shorter fluctuations of energy, called ultradian cycles, that repeat throughout the day. One of these, the basic rest-activity cycle (BRAC) is related to periods of alertness and a need for rest, runs anywhere from 80 to 120 minutes. The cycle length varies between individuals but is stable for each person. You may cycle every 85 minutes, whereas your partner may move through a 100-minute cycle. At the peak of the wave, we feel alert and energized. As the wave dips, we feel a need to draw inward, regroup, and perhaps feel a bit drowsy. You can track your own pattern by becoming aware of moments in your day when you feel able to tackle demanding tasks and times when you are somewhat daydreamy.
It is not hard to imagine what happens when BRAC rhythms are out of sync with an environment that has a continuous demand for energy and very few or poorly scheduled times for rest. Many of us plow through our day with our foot on the gas pedal only to slam on the brakes at bedtime. Is it any wonder why it is so difficult to get a good night’s sleep? Ignoring these ultradian cycles can disrupt how our daily energy ebbs and flows, pushing our body into states of hyperarousal that can eventually dysregulate our larger circadian rhythms.
Coordinating BRAC rhythms with those of our social environments is no easy task. It is hard to tell your boss that a 4:30 pm meeting doesn’t sync well with your alert-drowsy cycle. But understanding that these highs and lows are a natural part of our physiology can help create healthier routines. Rather than fight our cycles, we can learn to work with them. A natural dip in energy at around 3:00 in the afternoon may cause you to reach for the nearest soda, latte, or snack but, rather than fight the low energy, it is wiser to listen and respect it. A brief leisurely walk or a quiet, creative activity will more skillfully meet the body’s need for rest, allowing us to ride the dip in anticipation of the cycle’s inevitable shift.
There is growing evidence that daily routines that are closely aligned with our ultradian cycles are associated with improvements in immunity, blood pressure, weight maintenance, and our overall sense of life satisfaction. The most direct application for BRAC is in creating a healthy bedtime routine. Lately, the importance of bedtime routines is in the news, so perhaps you’re attempting to get better sleep by going to bed at a set time. You’ve followed the recommendations of putting away the phone, powering down the email, and turning off social media for an hour before bedtime. Still, you stare at the ceiling, wide awake for an hour before you finally drift off. It could be that you are trying to fall asleep when your body is cycling through a period of alertness. Science tells us that sleep is more likely when you coordinate bedtime routines with times when your body is in a drowsy phase. Tuning into these daily rhythms goes a long way in helping us make simple and small changes—sometimes even tweaks--that can have much larger and long-term impacts on our health.
For many years we have conceptualized the body as a machine, treating good health as the outcome of all the individual gears functioning properly. But as our understanding of circadian and ultradian cycles expands, we find that the body operates more like an orchestra, with each section making its own unique contribution, and with every instrument impacting the overall quality of the sound. And what gives the music its beauty is reflected in the skill of the conductor—which, in the body, is the circadian clock--to navigate the crescendos and the moments of stillness, synchronizing all the various rhythms to create an integrated whole. This week, I invite you to tune in and listen to the natural ebbs and flows in your body, to notice those subtle shifts in energy. What happens when you identify these peaks and valleys, and then listen while beginning to move with your own natural rhythms?
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