Those Evil Circadian Rythms

Remember some time ago I wrote about circadian rythms? Yes, I did. Just look back. I don't remember when I wrote it, I think in March some time - a reaction to the clocks changing. The littlest things screw my rythm (if it can be called such) up.

Here's the fun part. I found an article on it in my Uncle John's Bathroom Reader "Plunges into the Universe" about - da, da, DAAAA! - circadian rythms! I loved it - this book is all about science. You know how I love science.

It turns out there are four cyclical points to a person's circadian rythm - each at about six hours apart. The first is typicaly at 1000 - the first peak of energy and feeling awake and on point. Then at 1400, you hit your first downer - but if you've had a good night's sleep, you'll get through it okay. The next upswing is at 1900 - you're home from work, it's dinner time, so there is a burst of awakeness - not as good as at 1000, where it is all downhill from there. And then, there is the 0400 downswing - fortunately, I'm almost never awake for that. Yikes... good thing.

I'm not quite on that rythm - and not everyone is but most people fall in around those times. I get up between 0420 and 0445, so I find my peak time to be around 0830 - 0900. By 1430, I'm feeling the strain, but at about 1630 I'm back on and ready. At 2030, I'm ready for bed. Some of that has to do with the hour I get up but even on weekends, I have that same rythm. I just ignore it and sleep less and do more.

There's more - most people are on a 25-hour rythm, but each day the body resets the clock. Good thing or we'd all be ahead and sleeping through the day at some point. Also, there is something in your brain that works on the sleeping process from the moment youo wake, while another part of your brain is keeping you up... One of the factors it plays on is light - daylight, homeperson, not just any old light. Which is very obvious to me - I definitely have a different rythm in the winter.

A downside to living in a location with four separate and distinct seasons... in Las Vegas I suspect that is not a problem. The day ends earlier there now... ours begins at 0530 and ends at 2015. In Vegas the day begins around the same time but sets a half hour earlier. Believe me, I notice things like that. I'm very sensitive to differences in length of day/night.

What else was there? Oh, yes. Some people live night lives but they think that people never fully sdjust to that schedule. I disagree. Ray loves working nights, and never seemed to have trouble with working the graveyard shifts. Second or swing shifts he didn't like as much, but he never seemed to have any difficulty getting into the rythm of odd sleeping patterns. So I'm not sure that there aren't people that don't fully adjust to night hours.

However, they did mention that air travel will do this to anyone, even the most tolerant of people. A lot of people tell me that they only feel feel jetlag for a day. But I usually take three days to recover from it. And the book tells me that people try to change that, but traveling screws up anyone's internal clock going across time zones, since your body is still resetting the body clock at the normal time that it does that. Traveling west, in the apparent direction of the sun is easier than traveling east. Now, did I not say that? I did!

And that was all just from personal observation.

The wonderful world of circadian rythms!