A new study published in the journal Science reveals that the heliotropic sunflower uses both circadian rhythms and heliotropism (bending and turning toward the light) to enhance its growth. Plant biologists at the University of California, Davis discovered how sunflowers use their internal circadian clock, acting on growth hormones, to follow the sun during the day as they grow. The study found that heliotropism in the common sunflower, Helianthus annuus, is generated by the coordinate action of light.
Sunflowers like the common sunflower track the sun’s daily motion from east to west across the sky, maximizing visits from pollinators. An internal circadian clock controls the distinctive concentric rings of flowering in sunflowers, maximizing visits from pollinators. The researchers found that just like animals, sunflowers have an internal clock that regulates a 24-hour cycle of plant hormones, also known as a circadian clock.
The study detailed how sunflowers have their own 24-hour circadian rhythm, or internal clock. Sleeping at night and being awake during the day, sunflower swings are caused by an internal circadian rhythm, or body clock. This daily shift in position not only improves the growth of sunflowers but also maximizes visits from pollinators.
In conclusion, the study reveals that sunflowers are much more complex than they appear, with their internal clock controlling the timing of late-stage floret development and maximizing visits from pollinators.
📹 Circadian Rhythm and Your Brain’s Clock
Why do we sleep at night instead of during the day? In this episode of SciShow Hank talks about circadian rhythms, how they work …
Why do sunflowers droop at night?
Sunflowers, known for their heliotropism, thrive on sunlight, which can be detrimental to their blooms if they don’t receive enough sunlight. This phenomenon occurs when sunflowers naturally orient themselves towards the sun, causing their heads to droop. Sunflowers are predominantly annual plants, meaning they will die back at the end of their growing season. Even well-maintained sunflowers may begin to droop. Some sunflower varieties are naturally more prone to drooping due to genetic factors influencing stem strength and flower structure.
Do sunflowers have chlorophyll?
The process of photosynthesis commences with the unfolding of the initial seed leaf and persists contingent upon the presence of green leaves. The plant absorbs sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water, utilizing these resources to produce oxygen and sugars. These are then converted into carbohydrates, which are essential for growth and development. The majority of products resulting from photosynthesis are transported to the root system and the top of the plant during the vegetative growth phase.
What is the circadian rhythm of a flower?
The circadian clock is an internal biological timekeeper that helps organisms like sunflowers open their flowers at dawn in time for the arrival of pollinating insects. Sunflowers are composed of many individual flowers or florets, arranged in spirals around a center following an age gradient. Each day, a ring of florets of different developmental ages coordinates their opening in a specific pattern over the day. This pattern of flowering, or floret maturation, is repeated every day for five to ten days, creating daily rhythms of flowering across the sunflower head.
Marshall et al. analyzed time-lapse videos of sunflowers exposed to different day length and temperature conditions and found that sunflowers opened a new floret ring every 24 hours, regardless of the length of the day. Even flowers kept in the dark for up to four days maintained the same daily growth rhythms. This persistence of daily rhythms suggests that the circadian clock regulates the genetic pathways that cause sunflowers to flower.
Do sunflowers naturally face the sun?
Sunflowers grow in a field, facing east in the morning and following the rising sun. As they grow, they stop moving and face only east until harvested. This is due to the changing needs of sunflowers as they grow. Stacey Harmer, a plant biologist at the University of California at Davis, explains that sunflower stems must become super-rigid and reinforced to support their weight and prevent falling over. This is achieved by making lignin, a stiff material found in tree trunks, which helps the sunflowers resist falling over.
Do sunflowers have Heliotropism?
Sunflowers, like other plants, do not follow the Sun’s motion across the sky throughout their life cycle. Instead, they face east all day, with the sun backlit in the afternoon. This is known as heliotropism, a form of tropism, which was first observed by the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed it to be a passive effect, possibly due to the loss of fluid on the illuminated side. However, in the 19th century, botanists discovered that growth processes in plants were involved and conducted more in-depth experiments.
Heliotropic flowers track the Sun’s motion across the sky from east to west. Daisies or Bellis perennis close their petals at night but open in the morning light, then follow the Sun as the day progresses. During the night, the flowers may assume a random orientation, while at dawn, they turn again toward the east where the Sun rises. This motion is performed by motor cells in a flexible segment just below the flower, called a pulvinus. These cells are specialized in pumping potassium ions into nearby tissues, changing their turgor pressure.
For plant organs that lack pulvini, heliotropism can occur through irreversible cell expansion, producing particular growth patterns. This form of heliotropism is considered growth-mediated. In summary, sunflowers do not follow the Sun’s motion throughout their life cycle, but they do exhibit heliotropism in response to the direction of the Sun.
Do sunflowers sleep at night?
Sunflowers orient themselves eastward at night, in anticipation of the sun’s return, until they cease movement. Subsequently, they orient themselves eastward, awaiting the dispersion of pollen by insects and the subsequent germination of new sunflowers, a process that continues until the plants reach the end of their lifespan.
What do sunflowers do in the dark?
Plants employ a variety of daily rituals, including the prediction of sunrise, to ascertain the time of day and ensure their survival.
Do all organisms have a circadian clock?
The phenomenon of circadian rhythms has been observed in a diverse range of organisms, including cyanobacteria, plants, and mammals. Please be advised that ScienceDirect employs cookies and requires consent to proceed. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B. V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights are reserved, including those pertaining to text and data mining, AI training, and analogous technologies. The open access content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4. 0 International License.
Do sunflowers photosynthesize?
Sunflower is a photosynthetic autotroph that uses the C 3 photosynthetic pathway to convert sugars produced in photosynthesis into oils in sunflower seeds. This process requires energy, which is supplied by the oxidation of sugars. Sunflower, a weedy species, thrives in disturbed habitats near primitive human habitation. Humans recognized its utility and began cultivating it, developing it as a crop. This scenario may also apply to wheat and other crop species. The number of sunflower seed spirals may be a classic case in crop evolution.
Do plants have a circadian clock?
Plants have a circadian clock, which anticipates environmental cues like light and temperature and regulates photoperiodic rhythmicity for proper growth and fitness. This internal timekeeper helps plants adapt to environmental changes. ScienceDirect uses cookies and all rights are reserved for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. Open access content is licensed under Creative Commons terms.
What is the real sunflower life cycle?
Sunflowers are a crop that grows from seeds and is planted in spring and harvested in fall. Their life cycle begins with a seed, germinates, grows to maturity, and then flowers. The flower’s head contains many seeds, and at the end, the head becomes heavy and drops. The seeds are collected for processing and consumption. Sunflowers have a green stem and leaves, yellow petals, and can grow over 10 feet tall. They produce seeds that can sometimes be eaten.
📹 How optimizing circadian rhythms can increase healthy years | Satchin Panda | TEDxBoston
Over millenniums human body has been intricately programmed to adapt to the predictable daily changes in light, temperature …
I have a circadian rhythm disorder called Non-24 hour sleep-wake syndrome (N24). It actually evolved from Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS), another circadian rhythm disorder, because I was constantly trying to “correct” my sleep patterns to match everyone else’s with chronotherapy. Listening to your body and taking care of it are so important: I’d still be on much more typical DSPS (or an extreme night owl), rather than N24 if I hadn’t tried to correct it.
Without any kind of schedule, and just naturally going to bed and waking up, it would seem like there’s supposed to be 25 or 26 hours in a day… my body picks up a natural schedule that I fall to sleep about an hour later each night and consequentially sleep in an extra hour. This keeps on happening until my days are nights and nights are days and then eventually back to normal. Just something I’ve noticed
Thank you for making your article. My granddaughter will sleep from 5 in the afternoon til 12 AM and is up all night after that. I mentioned her circadian rhythm to her. I didn’t have the exact explanation. I learned it a long time ago and simply learned to obey it. But you explain it well. Short sweet and to the point like 18 year olds like it. I’ll share this with her!
What about those of us who are naturally nocturnal? As far back as I can remember (and I have confirmed this with older relatives for periods of time further back than I can remember) I’ve always been alert much later into the night than other people and had a much harder time waking in the early hours. It’s not insomnia, because once I am asleep, I sleep soundly through the night. It’s like my ideal sleep cycle is to go to sleep at 4 am and wake around 2 pm.
Hank you are my hero! Seriously don’t ever stop doing what you do. People around the world like me depend on you to teach us, and to make us laugh, and you do it all for free! I will be checking into this subbable thing but I’m a procrastination master. Perhaps a scishow episode should cover that, oh wait I think you already did. Or maybe that was asap science. Either way your my favorite science guy and I want to thank you for keeping it fun.
I work for a neurologist specializing in migraines and one of the first things we do for new patients is put them on a strict sleeping and eating schedule. A lot of times when you have constant migraines your sleep patterns become disrupted causing your circadian rhythms to get tossed out of wack. Long story short, sleep more, have less headaches.
Hank, please do another one of these explaining those of us who are naturally backwards and nocturnal. It is not my alarm or my work or a live stream that does it to me, it’s my whole life. And it’s not often set to 24 hours, either! Often I have 36 hour cycles, or longer. I have been this way my whole life, even as a kid I remember staying up until the wee hours only to fall asleep a couple of hours until I had to get up for school.
I sleep and wake according to the sun but in opposite, I wake when the sun goes down and sleep when the sun comes up. I actually was able to go over 5 years without ever seeing the sun. I guess I’m one of those odd people who just function better at night, I remember growing up I could not stay awake while the sun was up but once it was down I was hyper and ready to go.
I live in north Sweden, So in the summer we have midnight sun, when the sun never really sets, its always light outside. And in the winter we have just about 3-4 hours of sunlight and 18 hours of just darkness. So all of this about sleep cycles and how light and darkness effects sleep hormones (from “Why We Need It and What Happens Without It” episode) works in an entirely different way than this or whats “normal”. Would love it if SciShow could make an episode about this.
You know, historically we weren’t monophasic sleepers, either. We weren’t trying things like Uberman or Dymaxion or anything, but people would naturally get up for a couple hours in the middle of the night, and this waking time was generally viewed as a time for intimate or sacred activity. (Which sheds an interesting light on the ancient Christian monastic tradition of the Midnight Office, I think.) Eventually (I want to say in the 17th or 18th century, but I’m not 100% sure) the upper classes started simply sleeping through the night, and it spread down to the masses. Just an interesting historical note.
After I watched this I decided to attempt an experiment and changed my sleep pattern from once a day to sleeping twice a day, from 2 AM to 6 AM, and then 3 PM to 7 PM. My body didn’t like it for the first few days, but after that I felt all around more alert when I was awake, and fell asleep easier when I laid down. It felt good.
If all Circadian rhythms are synced with the rising at setting of the sun, then how come I work my best after about 9pm, and sleep best after 3am? If I sleep the same time, but at different hours of the day, say 11pm to 8am or 4am to 1pm, I feel much more rested with the latter hours. So clearly my Circadian rhythm is not the same as the way you describe. And this has been the case all of my almost 20 years of life, so it’s not a one-time occurrence.
Missed opportunity to talk about DSPS! (delayed sleep phase syndrome) Night owls! Not everyone has the same rhythm, some even have a ‘reverse’ or greatly delayed rhythm and function fine! With the exception of dealing with people and society frowning upon you ‘getting up late’ or stores closing ‘early’. I prefer night-owl-ism and getting things done over constantly living like you have a 6-hour-jetlag. Winters give me a SAD though.
Oh I have a request for a article. Why do only some people feel the urge to have children? I have never felt the urge to have children, and in fact, children REPEL me, rather than attract. (And I am at the age where it wouldn’t be strange for me to have children, both in society, though a lack of job/husband/etc might impede that part, or in biology.) Is there something up with my brain? Edit: I should clarify, though it is very nice of you all to be so concerned over me, I am not worried about something being wrong with me or that whole “I’m not normal” jazz. I was just curious if there was a hormonal or genetic reason as to why I don’t have the desire to have children. Not even in a “Oh, in the future, I want a child.” (And I do have biological urges for sex and romance so it’s not that.)
I’ve worked night shift for about 12 years. It took about 2 weeks to get used to sleeping during the day. The whole trick is blackout curtains and actually letting yourself sleep. Over the years, the biggest problem I have seen with night shift workers is refusal to sleep. They find excuses to stay up far too late into the day or get up much too early in the afternoon, and complain about the lack of sleep. If you have 16 hours from the end of one shift to the beginning of the next, you can find time for a solid 7 hours of sleep somewhere in there.
I clearly do not have any such thing. I’ve always hated sleep and never felt tired anyway and when I was 8 I finally decided to start ignoring the nonsense daily sleep that people do. I’ve seen better sunrises, but that one is still the most that sticks out in my mind because it was the first one I ever saw. At this point I sleep about once every 6 days (and then only about 3 hours before I’m raring to go again). Regardless of how often I do sleep though, I don’t actually sleep because I feel tired. I just get bored once I’ve met my goal(s) for that waking period and resort to the old standby from my childhood so I feel ready to mentally take on a new task/set of tasks. The complete opposite of my brother. He doesn’t have much down time (not by choice like myself – work) but his stated goal is to sleep for a full day. So far he’s made it to 21 last we talked about our weird sleeping (or not in my case) abilities.
So what happens when that rhythm is flipped? I’ve heard all my life that it’s impossible in the human species. Bull. I’m horribly tired all day, and once that sun sets, I’m completely fine. Even my brain starts working clearer and faster. When the sun is about to rise, I get very drowsy, and once it’s risen, I’m absolutely exhausted. I try and tell people that I’m nocturnal, and they laugh, and reference vampires. I’ve tried over and over to flip my schedule the other way, and did nothing but spent months too tired to move, and wishing I’d just die already. I originally thought I had insomnia until I noticed how I could easily sleep during the day… usually through classes…
I’m crying foul at the entire ‘scientific’ theory presented in this article. Circadian Rhythms are NOT universally ‘set’ in each individual to rise and set with the sun. It’s disappointing to discover that this article (which should actually dispel the stigma that true ‘night owls’ are ‘weird’ just because they aren’t like everyone else, due to their own unique Circadian Rhythm) falsely defines the concept as universally dependent on the rise and fall of the sun, which only fuels the ignorant belief that ‘normal’ people naturally rest at night and wake during the day.
All my life, I could only sleep after a very late night. It eventually became daytime sleeping only. Problem, indeed? No, I’d be broke without that. Thank heavens for the ‘malady’. I took a 11-7am job that no one else wanted, parlayed that by sleeping 8-1pm and got 2 degrees at night. Thanks for giving me this problem…
I watched & liked many of your articles, but this is the 1st one i thumbsdowned. Highly-skewed, you disregard Northern/Southern sleep patterns, countless non-24-hr lifeforms, & even use cats as an example of why napping is good. Hunter-gatherers likely didn’t sleep according to the sun, they were simply aware of it. Disappointing that nobody questions the 24-hour cirkydirky rhythm.
Hey Scishow I noticed that getting up in the morning is much more stress full than at night. i recently started working night work causing me to awake at 3:30 pm and go to bed at 8:30 am its the best sleep ever the easiest wake up ever and i am more alert than if i had to get up at 6am. further this patter has always been true as long as i can remember. is my CR messed up.
When I worked as a computer analyst I was in Taipei, Tiawan. Each afternoon everyone in the office would take a nap. It was offical office policy and they would lower the lights and everyone would lay their heads down on their desks and sleep. This would last for about a half hour and then the lights would come back on and work would resume. I was only in Taipei for a couple of weeks but the afternoon nap was great and I really missed it when I came back to the States.
My spouse and myself are different. He’s up early, and really gets things done early. I’m not even tired at 6pm, when he is, I have a lot more energy in the evening. I have tried, for years to fall asleep at 9PM on his schedule. I just can’t and I feel wired… He makes me feel bad for waking up late, and doing things late… hey now! I don’t rag on you for doing things early and loud in the AM. Our bodies, do what they do… they know our rhythm. They can’t all be exactly the same!
My circadian rhythm causes me to stay awake at night and sleep through a majority of the day, regardless of lighting or the presence of any technology. I’m in good health, I don’t feel remotely tired at night until about 3 or 4 a.m.. I don’t feel exhausted unless someone interrupts that rhythm and tries to make me follow their “day lark” lifestyle, I’m simply not designed for it. It’s only considered “normal” because it’s true for the majority, but not everyone.
“when the sun rises”. right, tell that to people living in the pole areas. This article is a great generalization, to be without light doesn’t automatically make you depressed. sincerely, Scandinavia. edit: in fact, depression itself can be the cause of sleeping disorders, I’ve never heard of it happening the other way around though. feel free to enlighten me if i’m wrong
Alot of people mid afternoon naps are due to diet and not circadium rythmn. We have heavy glutinous diets, eating things like white bread, pasta, rice in our food causing sugar rushes and essentially crashes.. the reasons why schools finish around 3pm and good schools know that most important subjects such as english maths and sciencce are taught before lunch.
I was a little underwhelmed with the information provided in this article. After reading some comments that seems to match my own experiences, I wanted to share my own. perusal this @ ca 9AM after being awake all night, for about 14 hours. My normal rythm is closer to 26-27 hours. I usually sleep 10+ hours when I sleep. Napping is something i literally cannot do, if I haven’t been awake for long enough (15+ hours) I simply cannot fall asleep. If I do fall asleep and am woken up after less than 8-9 hours I will feel sick for hours, and also usually have seizures of various magnitudes, ranging from light muscle twitches (myoclonic seizures) in my upper body to full on tonic-clonic seizures. Sleep deprivation of any kind make them more common and stronger. These things make it pretty much impossible for me to follow the kind of sleep habits described in the article. Another thing that tends to happen when I wake up prematurely is that I feel like I’m starving, yet my appetite is extremely low. So I go for a long time constantly eating a little bit at a time, not being able to eat enough to sate the hunger pangs.
I also suffer from insomnia. One night I decided to take a sleeping pill to help me sleep and I fell asleep right away (usually it would take me about half an hour to an hour to fall asleep.) ‘I thought wow this is great’ so I started taking sleeping pill every night. Then I couldn’t fall sleep with just one pill so I took I started taking two, then I started adding half a dozen melatonin along with that in order to fall sleep. Then when we ran out of sleeping medication and I couldn’t sleep for almost four days straight. Then my doctor diagnosed me with insomnia and unless I take a Lunesta every night. I can’t sleep. Where you born with insomnia or did you also accidentally turn yourself into one?
Hi! I think another article could be made the circadian rhythm. I’ve heard about teenagers having different circadian rhythms than adults do, and I’ve also heard that many northern animals (cariboo, specifically) have strange circadian rhythms that help them cope with the extreme sunlight differences in different seasons. I was wondering, like many people in the comments, how the circadian rhythms of humans living in the far north or south might be affected. Thanks!
I may be totally messed up beyond repair but i have always had the most energy at around 8pm to 12am and the least energy before 2 pm, sunrise/sunset doesn’t matter to me at all. That said, during the hot summer months i tend to have more energy at 3am – 9am as that is the time where temperature keeps dropping. Then at 3pm onwards i have the least amount of energy for that day. Unless of course a thunderstorm passes, at which point i get instantly energetic after the fact.
What about people whose natural rhythms are completely at odds with this? I find sleeping at night very difficult, and whenever I manage to “fix” my sleep schedule (e.g. by taking morning classes), I end up exhausted all the time, and as soon as a break rolls around, I go right back to staying up all night and hitting the hay sometime after sunrise.
I find most summers if I don’t have a solid thing to be awake for(like classes) my sleep schedule tends to slip towards sleeping from 4am-ish to 3pm-ish. I don’t mean to it’s just that if I don’t have to go to sleep to get up at a certain time I find myself noticing it’s 2am and I didn’t even notice. I also really like sleeping an unnecessarily long time, like 11-13 hours on a regular basis when I have nothing else to do. Because of how our daily schedules don’t match the sun(good thing given it gets dark here around 4:30pm), and so much unnatural light, might our brains be disassociating light with sleep?
as well as i remember they did a survey on a group of people in germany in the 60ies where they put people in a bunker without natural light, where everyone could choose its personal sleeping routine. they asked them randomly what day and what time it must be in their belief and so they found out that everyone has an other inner clock. there was a woman that had 48 hour days others had shorter days.
What happens if someone has a problem at their optic nerve or eye cells that react with the photons ? What happens to your circadian rythm then ? Do blind people with such problems also have insomnia issues ? And what about innatural light from screens or lamps, does it impair your circadian rythm as well ?
hmm… current sleep time is roughly 3-4 AM until usually around 12PM… I tend to get tired for a little while around 6PM, and feel “most awake” roughly 10PM until around 2-3 AM. I mostly ignore daylight though and currently lack any external pressures to force a “normal” wake/sleep cycle. generally waking up in the morning means being like “blarg” pretty much the whole day (and preferably having a supply of coffee available).
If I don’t have class or work, I tend to go to sleep around 5-6am and wake up 1-2pm…. in fact, around 1am at night is when I start to feel the most energetic. Even if I woke up at a normal time such as 9am or 10am that day, I still get very energetic around 1am. It might just be a matter of personal preference, because I like being awake at night and sleeping in the morning haha. I figure I’m still sleeping the normal 8 hours so it’s not a big deal what those hours are (until, of course, I actually have something to do in the morning).
I read somewhere that people didn’t always sleep in one 8 hour (or so) chuck. They would sleep for a few hours, wake up for a few hours, and then sleep again for a few hours. It kind of makes sense, because I know a lot of people (myself included) who wake up in the very early hours of morning (usually for me it’s between 2-3 am, even if I go to bed after midnight). That might explain it why this happens. Even if that’s not true, I always thought humans were supposed to sleep much more than we usually do. The problem is that we live in such a go-go-go society, which probably isn’t very healthy for us over the long run.
Is it possible that neuroscience will get to a level (in the foreseeable future) where we can adjust our circadian rhythm for time zone differences? Like using an electric chip to send signals to and from our brain kind of like a computer with wi-fi? (Insert sci-fi neuroscience dream/rant here) Also I sleep between 2300-600 and 1200-1500 every day, so effortlessly correcting that would be awesome.
Is there any research on circadian rhythms and people who live in places with more or less hours of daylight? I grew up in Alaska, and I’m pretty sure my circadian rhythms are adjusted to 24-hour daylight in the summer, since I have no problem sleeping when it’s light out. I wonder if circadian rhythms or different in ethnic groups who live in places like Alaska, Norway, northern Canada, etc.
So I’m curious if there is a hereditary trait in which your optimal circadian rhythm (just realized this, but the word rhythm has 2 syllables, but only 1 vowel… strange) is completely reversed. Me, my mom, my grandma and my great grandma all stay up til 4 – 7 in the morning and sleep most the day away. We all have either swing or graveyard shifts (‘cept my great grandma), and we cant even imagine getting up early morning. I tried with a job for a while for a few months, and no amount of coffee could keep me from being tired and groggy, even with 7+ hours of sleep. I seem most energetic from 5 pm – 9 pm, then kinda feel like napping, then energetic again from 12 am – 4 am. If it was just me, i wouldn’t think it too weird, but that it is the same with my mom, grandma and great grandma too is kinda strange. And we are the only ones in our pretty large family with this also.
for some reason, i can function much better at night. feels like my mind is more awake and i also get sick .. well never, unless i’m awake during the day. also my sleep cycle only takes one night to flip over from night or day.. so if i can’t sleep one night i wilk be up every night and if i can’t sleep one day i will be up everyday.
Why do our circadian rhythms change throughout our life? Such as teenagers who are able to stay up late and the elderly who wake up very early? My parents certainly would not be able to follow my usual sleep schedule, not because of work, but because their bodies don’t let them. I thought maybe this could be evolutionary- like prehistoric adolescents would traditionally stay up and watch for danger or something.
This guy sounds like a morning person. We’re not robots. Our circadian rhythms aren’t all the same. I’ve always been a night owl and have never functioned well in the morning hours. As a programmer, I wrote my best code after midnight. When I worked at the mine, my favorite shift was the night shift. It was always challenging switching from night shift to day shift. I never felt good until we finally got back on night shift. When I was young, after my parents went to bed, I would sneak out of my basement window, take my dog, and jog around town. I feel good at night. A lot of people do. Morning people don’t seem to be able to understand. I don’t really understand morning people. I’ll never be one of them. Imagine what the world would be like if people lacked the ability to work at night because of an internal clock that was the same in everyone. We’re not all the same. We’re not robots…
Eh. The circadian rhythm adjusts to your schedule if you keep at it long enough. When not working, I tend to go to bed around 4 AM and get up around 2 PM (8 hours later). I never really feel sleepy during the day outside of random 5-minute yawning bouts and can, in fact, not go to bed before midnight else I turn in bed until the clock strikes 6 in the morning. Blackout blinds and a powerful room lamp obviously help.
I was studied at MIT and my circadian rhythm was found to be upside down. I come fully awake at night when it gets dark and during the day I am just a lump of crap. This is why I usually work this evening or overnight shifts in medicine. My mother thinks that I can turn this around so for 2 years I got up early in the morning and went to bed early at night and I felt like doodoo and never got used to it. I am at my best at night so what say you to me?
All my life my circadian rhythm has been backwards I am most alert in the early afternoon, stay awake all night and generally feel sleepy around 2-4am. If given an open schedule, after working a 9-5 or something and having a few days off, my body will revert very quickly to being awake in the afternoon/evening and asleep during morning hours. I’ve always wondered if this had anything to do with my mild case of ADHD as certain medications also effect me in an opposite way. Antacids give me heartburn, Aspirin does nothing for me…ect ect. The list goes on.
Just a thought–I’ve had a gluten intolerance my whole life, but I only recently discovered it. Before, going to sleep was a constant struggle and I couldn’t sleep for long. Now, after I’ve stopped eating gluten, I sleep like a baby. Maybe the reason some people have trouble sleeping is because of food intolerances they’re not aware of 🙂
So is it abnormal to have a rhythm that doesn’t correlate to the sun? I spent several years in the military working overnight shifts. I sometimes went months with barely a passing glance at sun light. And yet, it was some of my most relaxed and productive times ever. Even now, I feel as if I become more alert once the sun goes down, and even looking at pictures of the moon make me feel energized. Is this common? And would this still be called a Circadian Rhythm? Or would it have another name? Just something I’ve always wondered.
This might sound like a silly question, but does the time of day you were born into the world somehow affects the circadian rhythm? Even without caffeine, i’m most alert/creative from 11pm- about 3am. Can’t do anything much before that. Mum used to joke saying it’s cause i was born a little after midnight. I do get the afternoon lows though. Naaaapps.
These days I wake up before the sun and by the time I get home from school it will be mostly gone again… Good thing I have vitamin- D tablets, or all that no-sun would mess me up. On the bright side, the day gets longer by three minutes or so every day (according to a site that tells such things). sooo, 6 1/2 hours daylight. Honestly I would actually rather sleep trough most of it, but school. I seem to be lacking a point…
I have the ability to tell the exact time to the minute at any time of day whenever I need to set the clock in my BIOS (CMOS reset on desktop computer). As I have no other clock in the house out in the open (all my mobile devices are always put away or covered), my minds clock is able to do this naturally without practice. I always know what time it is when I wake up from a dream. I am not only a lucid dreamer, but my dreams are often what most would consider nightmares. To me they aren’t they are more like adventures in a realm of consciousness beyond the world outside of my head. Because of these dreams,I have no natural rhythm of sleep. I always wake up after having vivid conscious dreams and cannot fall back to sleep and have another dream without dropping back into the same dream I woke from. This causes me to get up and and do things after a few hours or minutes of sleep. Perhaps when you gain more control of your brain’s ability to be creative and imaginative, you gain the ability to transcend the normal brain clock.
But I live in northern Scandinavia and during winter we loosed a huge amount of daylight. In the most northern parts, the sun doesn’t rise at all. Right not, it’s almost completely dark at 4 p.m. and the sun rises first about 7-8 a.m. Sure most Scandinavians are more tired during winter but we would get absolutely nothing done if we went to sleep according to the sun! And during summer when the days are so long that it almost wont be dark. Something tells me that most of the science mentioned hasn’t taken in to account to whatever or not people lives close to the poles.
I have had a bad sleeping pattern and circadian rhythms since I was a teenager and I can confirm whatever the doctor said. Though I’m only 33 years old, I have pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, overweight, anxiety, high cholesterol and triglycerides, and blood concentration. I never ever remember having a regular sleep pattern. My friends, save yourself before it’s too late. Unfortunately, there aren’t many resources about this and I’m so glad Doctor Satchin has invested in researching this topic. This is a really big deal but not talked about enough.
So interesting… in fact anywhere in the rural areas of the world, you’ll probably see healthier, happier people because they are so in tune with the movements of Nature . Living in fast-paced urban India, most of us have destroyed our cicadian rhythms,right from when we were kids studying till late into the night till now when we’re binge-watching our favourite shows when we should be asleep.Modern life has taken a toll on our health, but we’re so entangled in it, that we can’t just throw everything to the wind to do what our grandparents knew how to do . All we can do is try .🙏🇮🇳
Dr. Huberman, wholeheartedly supports Dr. Panda and his work asserts that 10-20 minutes of light first thing in the morning is key to circadian rhythm. Dr. Panda, you talked about 30-minutes of sunlight, but is early morning sunlight particularly important? Thanks for your incredible and game-changing work!
In school we have learned about how important our circadian rhythms are, and how our biological clock really does make sense of the things going on in our lives. Growing up, I used to think that it was so crazy that everytime it got dark in the night I would feel more and more tired. Satchin Panda in this Ted Talk has given his audience a variety of ways in which they can improve their circadian rhythm. This is following the ethical principle of beneficence and respecting our patients autonomy in the sense that we aren’t making the options end all be all types of situations. Instead Mr. Panda is trying to find a common ground with people on many different aspects. However, is there any research where people have just done one thing here and there which seemed to be helpful? I also don’t know if increasing the biological clock would be helpful if scientifically our bodies progress to deteriorate step by step as we get older.
Absolutely, AYURVEDA IS BRILLIANT 👏🏼 THANK YOU FOR RECONFIRMING WHAT OUR ANCIENTS HAVE BEEN PRACTICING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS . HOPE YOU WILL CONTINUE TO REDISCOVER LIKE HOW YOU DID ABOUT INTERMITTEN🎉 FASTING, BRING TO LIGHT THE MANY WONDERS ON AYURVEDA, YOU WONT NEED ANOTHER DRUG & PRAISE AUYURVEDA TOO!
What about daylight and the circadian rhythm? Doesn’t that also affect the sleep/eat/productivity rhythm? What about the different seasons and on which part of the world you are? Spring for example is a time period when the organism wants to “free” himself from the burden “”gathered”” in the winter. What about the position of the moon? I am interested in reading more about Dr. Satchidananda Panda works. Thanks.
Aaj ke Aapna ke Bhalo Laagche 😯 🙇🏻♀️ 👍 🌹. Prottek din shadda ya haalka rong color kaapor porben👌’Gala Bandh’ suit ya Punjabi churidar kurta set (khadi jacket)- like PM Modi, ya Safari suit, ya Dr.’s jacket coat, or Gola Bandh outfit. Apnar koi ekta indian accent dhora jaina. “LIVE” boja jache Na. (elocution tuition practice korben…Bhalo lagche.) Bolun : “Live ( Laive) ” … Living Live animals 🙏💐
I disagree – surely it’s best to eat something as soon as you wake and preferably include protein? This is because your body’s in a fasting state when you wake so protein ASAP gets your cortisol level down, so you feel better straight-away. For example, if you are an anxious or depressed person, I imagine that denying yourself food for even only 1 hour is a really bad idea because you’re starting the day off on the wrong foot, so to speak.
Most Circadian Rhythm charts are wrong. They show fixed times, like midnight and noon at 12, and morning and nightfall at 6. The times of these phases change daily, like sunrise, sunset, sun peak and midnight. You can use Salah charts instead. As Muslims, we have 5 obligatory daily Salah, that help us sync our Circadian Rhythm with nature. People have been doing it for millennia.
No mention of the pineal gland and calcification caused by fluoride. No mention of electromagnetic frequencies disturbing our own natural frequency through vast amounts of tech, electronic gadgets and wifi surrounding most westerners. Don’t worry night shift workers, we’re going to replace your job with AI/machines. That should help you sleep better at night! 🤡 (You may loose your home due to being unemployed but heyho, us scientists don’t get paid to give a sh!t about that)