Time and health
In recent years, there is a discipline abroad that has attracted people's attention, that is, time biomedicine, which is referred to as "time medicine" or "time therapeutics", which studies the influence of time on human physiological functions, pathological changes and pharmacological effects, and provides the best timetable for the prevention and treatment of diseases as well as clinical diagnosis and medication.
Chronobiology was established after the rise of the human clock theory. The "human clock" is the function of many organs in the human body that present approximate circadian changes or rhythmic changes in months, seasons, and annual cycles. This rhythm is gradually formed by the rhythmic changes in time for humans and organisms to adapt to the environment over thousands of years.
Professor Shinji Ito, a famous Japanese physiologist, believes that circadian rhythm is a manifestation of the coordination between the human body and the natural environment, and organic activities without rhythms do not exist. American scientists such as Ai Peirz also believe that rhythm is an important factor in maintaining human life.
Experiments have proved that time has an impact on various physiological indicators such as the rise and fall of human body temperature, pulse, speed of breathing, blood sugar content, level of hormone secretion, blood pressure and basal metabolism, and even on the susceptibility of pathogenic factors, birth and death. During the day, the peak of human body temperature is between 3 and 6 o'clock in the afternoon, when the pulse and breathing are often accelerated accordingly. Healthy people's sugar resistance, normal in the morning, gradually decreasing in the afternoon; The peak of systolic blood pressure is between 3 and 6:30 p.m.; Spontaneous labor pain in pregnant women usually begins at 1 to 2 o'clock in the middle of the night, and natural delivery is mostly at 3 to 5 o'clock in the morning.
A health professor in the United States concluded after surveying data on 2 million babies born that the highest birth rate of a day is 4 a.m. He also investigated 32,000 deaths and found that the best time for human mortality was 4 to 7 a.m.
Disturbing the body's periodic rhythm has a high degree of chronological order, which may cause physiological dysfunction and be prone to disease. Workers on the night shift are often found to suffer from gastritis, stomach ulcers, and gastrointestinal dysfunction in factories, which are far higher than those on day shifts. American scientists have studied the staff and air crew on the night shift: night shift workers are more susceptible to neurosis, heart disease and so on than day shift workers; The more time zones the aircraft crew travels with the aircraft, the greater the normal functioning of various parts of the human body is affected.
Abnormal patterns of activity and rest are also one of the reasons for the increased incidence of cardiovascular disease. Scientists in the United States conducted experiments that disrupted the circadian rhythms of monkeys, which resulted in heart disease. They also experimented with cockroaches, disrupted the circadian rhythm of cockroach activity, and then transplanted its brain to another cockroach that was normal at night, resulting in cancer in the cockroach that was affected by the brain.
Due to the influence of the time change of the physiological function of the body and the pathological changes, it is inevitable that the body will have corresponding rhythms for the sensitivity and toxic side effects of various drugs. For example, the proliferation of cancer cells has a temporal rhythm, at some times the division speed of cancer cells is relatively fast, and some times it is easy to be affected by radiation, so the treatment and medication of cancer diseases must also master the corresponding chronological rules. Anti-cancer pharmacological undulating method of administration, that is, different doses should be given at different times of the day,
Experiments to improve the efficacy of the comparable step-by-step (average divided dose of one day) administration method proved that if the doxorubicin was used to treat mice with ascites of Ehrlichis, if administered at 12 o'clock during the day, the survival time could be extended by 60% to 80% compared with the control group, and if the drug was administered at night, the survival time was shortened by 20%. Aspirin is taken at 7 a.m. for more than 22 hours in the body and no more than 17 hours at 7 p.m.
The temporal rhythm of human adrenal secretion determines that when compensating therapy for Addison's disease, cortisone acetate is given to 2/3 to 3/4 of the daily amount at 7 a.m., and then the full amount is supplemented at 11 p.m., which can obtain the best efficacy and avoid the side effects of inhibiting adrenal cortex secretion. Therefore, medication should pay attention to the time rhythm of the human body, pay close attention to the best time for drug delivery, and calculate the minimum dosage of how to achieve the best effect for each patient. When the body's sensitivity to drugs is reduced, the dose should be appropriately increased, and the dose should be reduced to ensure that the drug is reasonable, safe and effective.
Foreign exploration of the clinical application of human time rhythms is becoming increasingly active. It is expected that "time biomedicine" will have an important impact on the development of modern medical science and human health and longevity.
