Your body clock

I just finished watching a great BBC documentary called The Secret Life of Your Body Clock. Lessons learned:

1. There is an optimal time for any activities based on your body clock - and it is scientifically proven.
2. Increased light intensity throughout the day had the same positive effect on patients with Alzheimer's as did prescription drugs, without the added side effects and costs.
3. Timing chemotherapy to your body clock greatly increased the effectiveness of the treatment.
4. Early risers have a faster body clock, while night owls have a slower body clock.
5. Eat big meals in the morning, and progressively smaller until supper.

Your body clock is in charge of activating various hormones and processes in your body. The scientists have come up with optimal times for most of the activities. The recommendations are: getting up between 6-8am, working out between 4-6pm, best thinking is done between 10am-12pm. There is a need for a quick nap around 1pm. Let me know if you come up with a justification that your boss will accept!

Daylight resets our body clock and starts it in the morning. If you are a person working night shifts, you really have to watch your sunlight intake, and when you get the sunlight. Older people's eyes let in less light so they need to live in brighter environments. Wearing sunglasses is actually detrimental for older people, from the perspective that it allows less light in and their body clock does not get reset at appropriate times. This is one reason why they have problems sleeping. In the evening, minimize the use and intensity of light, to send the signal to your body that it is time for sleep.

There was a 3-year experiment conducted on Alzheimer patients using increased light intensity throughout the day. The scientists have found that by increasing light intensity during daylight hours for these patients, they were able to achieve positive results equivalent to what drugs could achieve. Patients had better sleeps, were able to function better, and their deterioration had been slowed down greatly. They also did not suffer from side effect that people on drugs experienced.

In the past, people ate a large breakfast, medium sized lunch, and a small supper. There is a good reason for this. In the evening, your insulin production is not at its optimum, resulting in most of the calories being stored as fat. That is a valuable piece of information.

Another interesting thing about the body clock is that some people's internal clocks are 22 hours long. They are the one's that are really tired early in the evening. Others have a 25 hour internal body clock. These people stay up later and later throughout the week. These clocks can be reset with proper use of light and darkness at appropriate times of day.

I like to learn information that helps me to 1. understand my body and how it works, 2. provides me with tools to modify the behaviour into what I want it to be. There is always something that can be tweaked to get more out of life. Never Stop Learning.