Improving Sleep Series - Understand The Body Clock

We all have a body clock, known as a Circadian Rhythm. The ‘body clock’ exists in every organ in your body. Every organ, indeed every cell in your body, is on this 24 hours cycle. This includes your stomach, your skin and your muscles. There is a central pacemaker in the brain that they give the feedback to (called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus).

Here is an example of a typical body clock routine:

4:00am – lowest body temperature. Blood pressure starts to rise slowly

7:00am – blood pressure has been rising and we get a rush of blood pressure that wakes us up and helps us stand up. Melatonin secretion stops (the hormone that makes us feel tired)

10:00 am – highest stage of alertness. Some people suggest not to have your first coffee till 10am because of this

3:00pm - dip in energy as blood pressure goes down

7:00pm – there is a second spike of energy around 7pm

9:00pm - melatonin secretion starts if we are in relative darkness and blood pressure continues to come down till 4:00am.

It can be normal to wake a bit groggy. However, you shouldn’t have any desire to sleep about an hour after waking. If you are still sleepy an hour later, then there may be an issue with quality of your sleep. As a general rule, if you have trouble getting to sleep that can be due to anxiety, staying asleep could be due to substances or physically health issues and difficulty waking up is linked to depression.

Treatments that re-train biological rhythms can speed recovery from mood disorders and prevents their return. When your bodies clock is functioning well you will typically feel better overall.

For instance, a lot of symptoms of depression are physical with a regular 24-hour cycle to them (sleep, appetite, energy, concentrate and mood. There is even some evidence of a 24-hour cycle to thoughts of death and suicide). Depression is often worse in the early morning. Individuals with depression often have blunted temperature variation and less variation in blood pressure compared to people without depression.

In conditions like Bipolar, there is a very sensitive Circadian Rhythm. It’s not that having Bipolar means an individual goes into a manic episode and then they stay up all night, it’s that they stayed up all night (e.g. studying) and then may go into a manic episode due to disruption of biological clock.

Ensuring you try to stick to a regular routine and wake and sleep time will go along way to helping with your sleep.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash