This year's Medicine Award is a resounding slap in the face for our stressful lifestyle. The award-winning study emphasizes that time has gotten out of control, at least as far as our biological clocks are concerned.
With the meticulous care of a master watchmaker, this year's Nobel laureates in medicine Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young have captured the genes and proteins that help our biological timing keep pace …
On the day when we lose this rhythm, chaos begins: we suffer from sleep disturbances, we want to eat at the wrong time of day, we are either hot or cold.
Why? Our body is an ingenious construction, almost like the famous astronomical clock in Prague, charming tourists with the figures of the apostles, which at certain strokes of the clock look out in a precise and predetermined order.
In the body, in their place are hormones that are released at the right time and in a carefully calibrated sequence.
Failure during these hours is like a constant jet lag. It's not just hard, it's dangerous. One day, experimental animals were transported back and forth across the Atlantic to disrupt their daily rhythms as much as possible. And just a few weeks later, they simply died.
The study of circadian rhythms, the foundations of which were laid by the current Nobel laureates, shows how all living things have adapted to the change of day and night since prehistoric times. As a result of evolution, all life has adjusted to the rhythm corresponding to the daily rotation of the Earth around its axis relative to its star, that is, the Sun.
The life of people has always been subordinated to the change of time of day, our ancestors went to bed at sunset and got up at dawn. Until now. We sit on social networks until dawn, and work and eat whenever we can.
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It is now known that sleep disturbances in shift workers can cause cancer, diabetes, stomach ulcers, hypertension, heart disease and even mental disorders.
But rewinding is not easy. We expect shops to be open 24/7, and few people are probably ready to go to bed at seven o'clock in the evening. But a deep message from this year's Nobel laureates is that we need to start listening more to ourselves.
We have a society, a job market, and a lifestyle that rarely matches our internal clock.
Another message: when we get old, get sick, and our internal timing gets lost, which also refers to the signs of aging, first of all, we need to take care to start living in rhythm with our own body. In harmony with daylight. But a strict daily routine in general, such as specific meal times, can help set the clock.
Probably, living on such a strict schedule goes against the era of 2017. Unfortunately - at least for health.
Henrik Ennart