dr. Lisa Silvani "Good quality of sleep is one of the biggest health assets you can have."
Sleep is crucial and need to be maintained throughout our life not only because it gives us back our energy but also because sleep affect circadian rhythm and vice versa.
Our body clock is nothing but a 24-hour biological clock that synchronizes our internal biological processes. Circadian rhythms are physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a 24-hour cycle. These natural processes respond primarily to light and dark and affect most living things, including animals, plants, and microbes. Chronobiology is the study of circadian rhythms. One example of a light-related circadian rhythm is sleeping at night and being awake during the day. Circadian rhythm controls our body by releasing hormone on certain time, adjusting our body temperature and even regulating our eating pattern. All these three key activities are deeply connected with most our metabolism pathway which in turns regulate our wellbeing.
Most of our body's functions happens under the control of our biological clock, we adjust to the natural variation of our body clock, sleep well and wake up with our clock function as normal. A disturbance in our body clock is known to bring several health problems like depression, obesity, poor concentration, and increasing risk for diabetes.
Sleep and Circadian Rhythm
Your body not only follows a normal routine, but also your body-clock has its own programming. Therefore, your body operates according to your body clock. It is recommended to follow the normal routine of your daily life in order to get your body moving the same way every day.
As much as circadian rhythm affect our sleep and also alertness, our sleep and alertness also affect how our circadian rhythm works. We now know that we operate under a biological clock that happens at the same flow everyday. But what if we try to do things differently? What if we mess a little with our sleep? Will this affect our circadian rhythm too? Or are our circadian rhythm can force us to follow its movement involuntarily?
Your circadian rhythm do has power beyond what we imagine. It controls our sleepiness moment and our alert moments. But of course, these things can be tampered by our will and also our needs. So when we decide to stay up late to watch movies even if we already feel sleepy, we can still stay awake, just maybe not at our best conditions. Aside from probably being moody, we also risk changing our circadian rhythm, and it’s not also to best conditions. So making sure you stay on your sleep and wake schedule is one way to maintain circadian rhythm.
The Modern Life
No matter how much you love your work, no matter how much you love the people you work with, no matter how much you love being social or being by yourself, you are still human. To help make our lives better, we always have to balance these commitments with our needs. Let’s take a step back from all these busy schedules and think about what is good for you as a person. We cannot give your work all the respect if it is affecting you personally. Hence, to get a clear view of what is best for you, one should know a lot about their own body and the changes that happens when something is off balance, including sleep and circadian rhythm.
Strategies To Maintain Circadian Rhythm
The best way to maintain your circadian rhythm health is by maintaining good sleep habit. I know it sounds cliché and probably not something you want to hear, but healthy sleep is necessary not only to increase our chance of longevity but also to actively maintain our chance of staying alive. With many things correlated to circadian rhythm and sleep habit is the key to maintain it all, I think it’s time for us to give our sleep more priority in our 24-hour schedule.
Although many people can argue to bring some food that can help you stay healthy without having to sacrifice your time for a good night sleep, it just won’t do in long term commitment. However, there are some things that you can do to ease your way into getting good sleep habit.
1. Avoid caffeine
Caffeine is good for your heart at a perfect dose. It also allows more energy when you really need a boost in the morning or afternoon. But taking caffeine more than enough or even after the sun start to go down can increase your chance of having sleep problems. So avoid taking too much caffeine and take it only in the morning to noon.
2. Manage your stress level
The way our body connect with each other parts continues to amaze me. It’s just the same with sleep and stress. When we are having a bad day, it’s going to be a lot harder to get some sleep at nigh, even if we tried to avoid drink caffeine or already in bed since 8 pm. So learning the art of relaxation and being able to maintain your daily stress and mood also help to maintain your sleep habit and circadian rhythm.
3. Sleep and wake at the same time
It’s not surprising that we need to keep the same schedule with our sleep, including our bedtime and wake-up time. Being able to do both give us the benefit of controlling and maintaining good flow of circadian rhythm. So it’s not only about how long should we sleep, but ultimately about keeping your flow throughout day and night.
Conclusion
There are many reasons to take notice and maintain your daily circadian rhythm. Many people believe that keeping it in check can provide longevity and also the energy to run daily activities in peak performance. But aside form that, we also need to keep in mind that circadian rhythm is a very basic human need since it’s complexities and roles in many pathways of our metabolism seems to attached to it.
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