Your Body’s Most Powerful Influencer

Although I teach workshops on sleep, understanding how all of life’s rhythms interconnect is key for our health–a powerful influencer and an often overlooked superpower. The great mysteries of the body's clocks are being unraveled by the study of biological rhythms called chronobiology.

You are likely well aware of seasonal patterns of flu and cold viruses that are affected by large environmental influences such as climate, animal migration patterns, and human behavior. Mood, too, can change with the seasons, with more depression accompanying the winter months. Shorter, diurnal (daily) patterns of mood have elicited subtypes of depression, one being those who wake with depression that improves by evening time. Research in this area has led to interventions that appeal to common sense, such as light therapy, but even more importantly, the timing of it, as light leverages the most influence over the body’s clocks when administered in the morning.

Body clocks are our most powerful influencers.

Source: Lightsource/Shutterstock

Chronobiology

Circadian rhythm disruption (dysrhythmia) leads to an increased risk of myriad diseases, but each disease also has times of lowest ebb and peak flow within a 24-hour circadian rhythm. For example, heart disease has its highest risk of a heart attack in morning hours, while Alzheimer's can have evening confusion called sundowners syndrome. Asthma’s peak risk is at 4:00 AM, and osteoarthritis pain typically spikes later in the day than rheumatoid arthritis. Cancer, too, has a circadian rhythm that can give us insights into its process and our other various biological clocks.²

Cancer’s Clock Insights

Cancer is a powerful example of the importance of chronobiology for our health. Cells that have lost their usual reproductive life-death cycle and over-replicate create a tumor. Large-scale studies with diverse populations found breast and uterine cervix cancer have the most malignant changes occurring in the winter and are more likely to be detected in the spring. In contrast, testicular cancer has peak detection in winter.

These seasonal patterns are far from where the circadian rhythm and cancer relationship ends. There are shorter 24-hour rhythms as well. A scientific review in 2021 found ways to increase the precision of treatments by matching drugs with patient chronobiology to maximize potency (treatment effectiveness) and reduce toxicity (side effects).³ Astounding as this is, research dating back to 1985 (published in Science) found that the timing of chemotherapy could result in higher treatment effectiveness with half of the side effects just by switching which drug was given in the morning versus the evening.⁴

No new drug, no increased dose—just switch the time of day each drug was taken.

Science Meets Ancient Knowledge

It is important to note that for more than 5000 years, traditional Chinese medicine has recognized that when matters as much or more than what treatment is given. Oncologist Bill Hrushesky stated:

Traditional Chinese medicine recognizes the concept that the dose cannot possibly be isolated from the concept of timing. An entirely different dose of a certain drug or an entirely different drug is routinely prescribed for a single ailment at different times of the day, different times within the week, menstrual cycle, or year.⁴

What does this mean for us and our health?

This research highlights several key points about our body clocks and the research itself. Here are six things that left an impression on me:

1. For starters, learning about the profound importance of our body clocks reminds us just how intimately we are connected with the natural day-night cycles, the body's most powerful influencer. Living out of synch with this impacts health negatively on a cellular level.

Since nothing is isolated from an environment, even in a laboratory petri dish with conditions “held constant.” There is still a larger context in which it exists; it may have its own endogenous (internal) or exogenous (external) rhythm-keepers.

2. This ever-present and changing context is something to be valued and leveraged, rather than ignored or “controlled” (as placebo has typically been treated). Recognizing that nothing happens in isolation can help us see the bigger picture in which something grows.

3. It also highlights the need for a new paradigm beyond the mechanistic view that the biomedical model holds about our health and life itself. Even the biopsychosocial model just begins to scratch the surface of how our internal and external environments are interwoven.

The principles of allostasis capture the predictive ability that our cells have as they organize in efficient anticipation of what biological demand is to be met next. ^5,6

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4. We can guide what our bodies anticipate, thus shaping how we are “trending.” In part, this is done by putting certain practical anchors in place, like regularly planned moments each day. Scheduling things like routine light, activity, and food (LAF) within a flexible routine can support our body’s natural rhythms. It reminds me of an adage for our own lives: what we practice is who we become. We can guide—but not necessarily control—our growth and evolution by what we surround ourselves with and what we focus on.

5. Along with astounding scientific discoveries and rigorous scientific references, it should also be acknowledged that indigenous people have lived and live in profoundly intuitive ways. Some of these have become scientifically validated and accepted into the mainstream.

One example includes mindfulness practices growing in popularity since the 1970s in the west but practiced for thousands of years in the east. More recently, “nature deprivation” has been identified as a problem along with our need for natural environments or ecotherapy, which was not questioned by indigenous cultures. Even compassion has been re-introduced as a “revolutionary” way to practice medicine.

Sidebar: I wonder what has happened to us that we need a scientific review to tell us that human compassion is an important, doable, and cost-saving way to practice care of other humans? That paying attention in the moment is healthy and that playing outside, engaging in meaningful work, and restorative sleep keeps us well. Do we need more research on this?

6. A related and final point is that there can be a tension between evidence-based medicine and ancient practices that push people into one camp or the other. Perhaps we can approach both science and ancient ways of living with curiosity, if not awe.

Since science and culture are ever-evolving themselves, we may want to pay attention to the simple wisdoms that the body supplies. This only requires taking the time to listen to them.