When we eat too early or too late in the day, fewer of those hormones that help with digestion are available, so the body has a tougher time regulating blood sugar after eating and absorbing and storing nutrients from that food. After we wake up, the body releases certain hormones that make us feel hungry (and prompt us to eat) and other hormones that help us break down and digest that food. “If we disturb them, it has an impact on most systems.”įor example, the digestive system has its own circadian rhythm. “Circadian rhythms themselves are really fundamental to our biology,” Wright says. The sleep-wake rhythm is a key one because physiological processes such as the production of appetite hormones, digestion, and even the immune system are designed to activate when we’re awake and slow down when we’re asleep. Then, when we become adults, the cycle moves back toward the middle of the day again, research shows.īecause our internal clocks, which each control various bodily functions, are linked to the master body clock in the brain, lots of things can go wrong if our circadian rhythms get thrown off schedule. Teenagers, for example, may need a later wake time and may be more alert later in the day. (There are also circadian sleep disorders, which are sleep problems that involve a disruption in the timing of sleep, which can be caused by a master clock malfunction of some kind or some external factor that misaligns your daily patterns, according to Mayo Clinic.)Īge is another factor that can affect circadian rhythms and whether the natural sleep-wake cycle (and other cycles) tends to run early or late, Breus says. The brain will try to sync its clock to daylight, so when you’re exposed to artificial light late at night, it can push your biological clock toward the night-owl end of the spectrum, Wright adds. Others may have dysregulated circadian rhythms (and sleep-wake patterns) because of other factors, like a nighttime work schedule or a sleep condition like insomnia, Dr. Some people are right in the middle, and others may tend to naturally lean toward one end of the spectrum or the other. Research has identified, for instance, that certain genes are linked to whether or not someone has an earlier or later circadian rhythm (if they’re an early bird or a night owl), explains Michael Breus, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author of Energize! and The Power of When, both about chronobiology and optimizing daily activities based on the body’s internal clock. But there’s variation based on our behaviors, genetic makeup, and other factors. Most bodies run on similar schedules (in terms of naturally wanting to sleep at night and be awake during the day) because we’re exposed to similar light patterns over the course of the day. And the master clock coordinates the body’s other clocks by regulating things like body temperature and hormone levels, which in turn trigger the molecular clocks in individual cells, Wright says. The master clock takes its cues from the lightness or darkness we’re exposed to (the fact that these cells live near the eyes is not a coincidence - the cells receive direct input from the eyes). (It’s also sometimes called the body’s master clock or circadian clock, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) That clock is housed in the brain’s hypothalamus (above the optic nerve) it’s called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and it contains specialized cells that use a molecular process to keep time, research has shown. They body also has one master internal clock, Dr. The presence of one set of molecules triggers the production of other molecules, which in turn triggers the next phase in the cycle and enables cells to keep time, explains Kenneth Wright Jr., PhD, a sleep and chronobiology researcher at the University of Colorado. They’re a collection of molecules that interact with cells to tell them when to do certain things (like release hormones that make you feel sleepy, awake, or hungry) that keep those circadian rhythms on track. Our biological clocks, or internal body clocks, are our cells’ natural timing devices.
One example is being awake during the daytime and sleeping at night. Circadian rhythms are the natural physical, mental, and behavioral changes that happen in the body, and they follow a 24-hour cycle, usually in response to lightness and darkness, according to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
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