Over the last few years, there has been a groundswell of podcasts, wellness apps and self-improvement social media videos alerting a mass audience to the potential of applying circadian science. In fact, the same is true for the trillions of cells and hitchhiking microbes that make us who we are. Various systems in your body, including the cardiovascular, metabolic, immune and reproductive systems have their own “ peripheral clocks,” which cycle through active and resting phases. That light suppresses melatonin, the sleep hormone, and times the cascade of energizing chemistry that helps us wake up in the morning and kickstart our day. Today we know that the master timekeeper in the human body is in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, a cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus that receives input from cells in the retina that are responsive to visible blue light from the sun. Her paper, “ On the Time Memory of Bees,” describes the punctuality of swarm behaviors which can be trained to different times of day. Two hundred years later, the German ethologist Ingeborg Beling reported similar cycles in the animal kingdom. In 1729, French scientist Jean-Jacques d’Ortuous de Mairan studied the daily movements of Mimosa pudica leaves, observing that they continued even in complete darkness. The 13th century “Noon and Midnight Manual” describes a principle of Chinese traditional medicine whereby qi - the body’s vital force - flows to different organs across twelve two-hour increments, repeating every 24 hours. a ship’s captain under Alexander the Great reported seeing tamarind leaves which closed at night and started to open at sunrise, unfurling themselves toward midday. Yet biology is suffused with similar clocks. It can often feel like daily life’s alarm clocks, work schedules and appointments are a rigid imposition on an otherwise free-flowing natural world. Up until that moment, Beatriz Flamini had been isolated in a cave for a 500-day challenge, without natural light, news or even sight of her own reflection.įlamini is an extreme athlete known for climbing and mountaineering - forever on the lookout for “experiences very few human beings have had.” But for chronobiologists at the universities of Granada, Almería and Murcia, her expedition was an opportunity to monitor the human body unprompted by the usual signals that give structure to our days. On April 14, a 50-year-old Spanish woman emerged from her temporary dwelling place, 230 feet under the rolling hills of Andalusia.
Philip Maughan is a writer and researcher based between London and Berlin.
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