Goofing with your inner clock

Maria Isabel Garcia

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[Science Solitaire] Disruption of sleep patterns and metabolism are at the heart of many health issues

I think I was around 6 years old when I learned how to tell the time.

My mom made a paper clock for me with movable clock hands to practice on. I remember being so fascinated with how the clock hands dictated what people had to do like wake up, eat, go to school or work, go home and what I hated the most when I was a kid: take afternoon naps.

I thought people who knew how to tell the time had power and so it felt cool that I also learned how to tell the time.

As I became an adult and more so now that I am middle-aged, clock time confuses me more. It is because more often, it feels like it does not correspond with what I have to do, personally or professionally.  

The disconnect gets more obvious with jetlag when I travel long distances and there are big time differences. Recently, I had to travel to Disneyland for work and my jetlag was so bad that when Goofy would not let me go, that I gave him a high five by the elevator, I got cross! Anyone who gets evil with a “live” Disney character must have some serious mental issues and mine is apparently indeed, a “mental” one.

We all have inner clocks or circadian clocks. These are dictated by a network of about 20,000 neurons in your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus or SCN. Each of those neurons is an individual clock that knows and keeps your own “time” in terms of your metabolism and sleep cycles.

How these “inner clocks” fire are dictated by a group of genes called “Period” genes. While genes of course vary, the typical genes for humans fire at their peak at mid-day and then start to slough off and fall at midnight, explaining why we all generally are busy bees during the day and get bed rest at night time. But with 20,000 individual clocks, how do they sync with each other and with the demands of a changing environment?

About 9 years ago, researchers led by Erik Herzog, a biology professor at Washington University in St Louis, identified a neurotransmitter they called “VIP” as the one that synchronizes all the 20,000 ticking inner clocks so that none of them is never way too off from one other. 

 

But what if you need to extend your cycle an hour or two more so that you can work on your paper or attend to your kids? A study of the same researchers last 2013 has identified a neurotransmitter, “GABA,” that gives that SCN battalion a bit of a jolt so that they don’t all get too tightly wound to one another that they cannot shift.

Now, if our GABAs were all up to the job, then we all should not have a problem adjusting to jetlag and an “AO” (Always-ON) world, right? Hmm, wrong.

This is because, like many of the processes inside our bodies, it took a really long time to be that way and long before we had to perform in call centers, graveyard shifts, and parties that extend way into the early mornings.

It seems like there are not enough GABAs, or our GABAs are not yet capable of making our inner clocks shift so dramatically as to make our metabolism and sleep cycles sync with the demands of our professional and social lives in the AO world.

A German researcher Till Roenneberg has referred to this kind of time discrepancy as “social jetlag” since what your biological clock says in terms of your metabolism and sleep cycle is very different from the kind of schedule you follow to keep up with work, family and friends especially in the AO world.

Scientists say that the farther the latter schedule is from one’s inner clock, the likely it is to cause you health problems. Disruption of sleep patterns and metabolism are at the heart of many health issues as well as accidents, not to mention productivity in terms of focus and attention.

I agree with scientists that institutions like schools, corporations and governments should seriously consider the disruption of our “inner clock” as a public health issue.

We have just plainly accepted overextended work and leisure hours as part of our lives and as a benefit of our seeming ability to flex our own sense of time like playing with bubblegum. We think that we could just do this without cost to our own inner clocks.

But we can only extend it within the limits of our own biology and our biology cannot ignore the 20,000 ticking clocks inside each of us. If you don’t believe me, just ask Goofy. – Rappler.com

 Maria Isabel Garcia is a science writer. She has written two books, Science Solitaire and Twenty One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire. Her column appears every Friday and you can reach her at sciencesolitaire@gmail.com.

 

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