Daily rhythms keep your body ticking like a clock.
It’s true for morning glories, crickets, birds, dogs, and yes—humans too. Human beings follow a 24 hour cycle, during which your body performs multiple tasks during the day. At night, your circadian rhythm is important for body rest, gut rest, healing, repairing, and producing hormones. While asleep, your brain at times is as active as when you are awake. During your sleep cycle, your body is in a fasting state so that insulin levels drop along with blood sugar levels. Damaged cell organelles (the intracellular structures which provide your cells with metabolic functions) are removed and repaired while you are asleep. So, even when you’re not “doing anything” while you sleep, your body is busy repairing, healing, and making the hormones you need for the next day.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of body processes that follow a 24-hour clock:
✔ Hormones
✔ Blood Pressure
✔ Blood Sugar
✔ Immune Function
✔ Detoxification
✔ Digestion
That’s right—nearly every body process has a daily cycle.
⏰ It’s called the circadian rhythm ⏰
We have a master circadian clock in a specialized area of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus plus self-regulating clocks in the gut, liver, and other internal organs. The hypothalamus is the “director” of our bodies, providing signals to organs for the production and release of hormones. In this manner, the hypothalamus is involved in regulating body temperature, hunger, thirst, blood pressure, and your sleep. The sleep-wake cycle involves nerve impulses from the retina, through the hypothalamus and then sent on to the pineal gland where melatonin is produced and released governing the circadian rhythm of our bodies.
BUT…do you know what happens when we eat, exercise, sleep, or stare at our phones at times that are out of sync with our internal clock?
It’s not good.
When our rhythm gets out of whack, it’s called Circadian Disruption . It can look like:
✖ Unable to fall asleep
✖ Difficulty staying asleep
✖ Waking up groggy
✖ Crashing mid-day
✖ Feeling tired but wired
Not only that, but circadian disruption can upset your mood, metabolism, hormones, and digestion too.
👀 Watch for my upcoming posts where I’ll be sharing some surprising causes of circadian disruption and what you can do to fix it. www.healthwithoutrisk.com
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