ROBYNN LIN FREDERICKS
BCHHP
CIRCADIAN BIOLOGY
Your cells are keeping time.
Light. Darkness. Food. Movement. Temperature.
Your biology is continuously reading the environment for signals that help tell it when to do what.
Before the sun rises, the conversation has already begun.
CIRCADIAN BIOLOGY
Circadian biology is bigger than sleep.
Every cell and organ in the body operates within rhythms.
A central clock in the brain helps coordinate timing across the body, while clocks throughout our tissues help organize when biological processes are primed to occur.
Sleep is a part of that conversation. But so are metabolism, hormones, immune activity, body temperature, digestion, repair, cognition, and cellular energy.
Circadian biology is the study of that timing - and how our biology stays synchronized with the world around us.
THE STRENGTH OF THE RHYTHM
Timing matters.
So may the strength of the signal.
Circadian health isn't simply about whether a rhythm exists. It's also about when that rhythm occurs, how well our internal clocks stay coordinated, and how clearly biological peaks and valleys are expressed across the day and night.
ALIGNMENT
Are our internal rhythms occurring at biologically appropriate times - and staying coordinated with one another
and with the external environment?
AMPLITUDE
How strong and distinct are those rhythms - the difference between biological peaks and valleys across the day and night?
Research increasingly gives us reason to ask whether healthy agin depends not only on keeping time,
but on maintaining robust, well-coordinated rhythms as we age.
ENVIRONMENT IS INFORMATION
Your clock doesn't live in a vacuum.
Light and darkness are among the most powerful environmental signals that reach the circadian system - but they aren't the only ones.
When we eat. When we move. Changes in temperature. Sleep and wake timing. Activity and rest.
Our biology evolved within an environment that changes rhythmically across the day: darkness into dawn, sunrise into daylight, daylight into dusk, and eventually darkness again.
Ang that's where the question becomes especially interesting:
What happens when we begin living in greater conversation with those signals again?
