It’s About Time: Chrononutrition and Biorhythm Science
How We Tick
At last, the Chrononutrition and Biorhythm science that IDNutrition has been utilizing since its inception is now working its way into medicine.
U.S. scientists Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosebush and Michael Young received the 2017 Nobel prize for Medicine for unraveling of molecular mechanisms that control our body’s internal clocks.
Chronopharmacology (also known as Chronobiology) is the study of biological clocks and is now a growing field of research thanks to the pioneering work of these three scientists. Their work uncovered the role of specific genes in fruit flies that keep the body synchronized with light changes. “This ability to prepare for the regular daily fluctuations is crucial for all life forms,” Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Karolinska Institute Nobel Committee, told reporters.
“This year’s Nobel prize laureates have been studying this fundamental problem and solved the mystery of how an inner clock in our bodies can anticipate daily fluctuations between night and day to optimize our behavior and physiology.”
Their discoveries help explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm to be in synch with the Earth’s revolutions. Scientists now understand that body clocks influence alertness, hunger, metabolism, fertility, mood and other physiological conditions.
Today, scientists are exploring new treatments based on circadian rhythms, including establishing the best times to take medicines. At IDLife, we have been applying these same principles for the past 18 years to our Nutrition product development.
Your Body is a Time Machine
Life moves to the beat of clocks and calendars…some are found outside the body, like the one on your smart-phone, and others are found within your body. When we talk about clocks in this context the application is to rhythms or biorhythms, where our body changes according to a certain predictable timely pattern.
The difference between night and day affect your body’s daily cycles of body temperature, blood pressure, hormone regulation, immune cell activity, and metabolism. The brain’s timekeeping mechanism, the SCN, receives instructions from a variety of sources, but most often from light changes (ex: changing from light to dark when the sun goes down). The SCN then relays those signals to your body’s cellular clocks, giving cues to regulate overall body rhythms and functions.
These predictable patterns or rhythms can be:
Circadian Rhythm: Every 24 hours (like hormone levels or even blood pressure peaks)
Ultradian Rhythms: Less than 24 hours, as often as every few minutes (like REM sleep patterns, ideally every 90 minutes)
For our purposes at IDLife, we study and apply the rules of Circadian Rhythms where the body’s rhythmic changes occur every 24 hours.
A Time for Everything
In your initial introduction to IDNutrition you probably wondered why we took the trouble to dispense your Personalized Nutritional Program in Breakfast and Dinner Packets.
In order to deliver the right product for the right person at the right time of day, IDNutrition was designed to pay attention to the smallest details. IDLife firmly believes that the “one size fits all” approach can’t be applied to nutrients, and have taken the steps to ensure each individual receives their personalized program packets at the most optimal time of day for their bio-rhythms.
While there are many examples of body rhythms, a few that we use in our education are:
The Liver repairs and detoxifies itself from 10PM until 2 AM (hence IDN gives your liver nutrients in the Dinner Packet)
Blood clotting also shows a circadian rhythm, peaking in the early morning and coinciding with increased incidence of heart attack (hence IDN gives nutrients that are supportive of healthy coagulation in the Dinner Packets so they are available overnight.)
Osteoarthritis pain is most prevalent in the afternoon (hence IDN gives supportive nutrients in the Breakfast Packet so they are available at that time).
Rheumatoid Arthritis pain is more prevalent in the morning due to low Cortisol (hence IDN give supportive nutrients in the Dinner Packet the night before so they are available at that time).
The Take Away
Scientists now understand that body clocks influence alertness, hunger, metabolism, fertility, mood and other physiological conditions. “We are learning more and more what impact it has to not follow your clock,” Nobel committee member Christer Hoog told Reuters. “If you constantly disobey your clock, what will happen?”
The purpose here is not just to be instructive, but also to give the confidence that IDNutrition has used the science of Chronobiology/Chrononutrition to guide the optimal dosing of its nutrients and formulas. While the question posed above has not yet been studied, we can say with certainty that at IDLife, the advanced scientifically based formulas you, your friends and family receive will be provided at the “right time of day” to help maximize nutritional benefits and optimize health.
