Welcome to your Circadian Health Knowledge Hub

Welcome, unstoppable friends! Here is your friendly Circadian Health Knowledge Hub to help you learn and understand our amazing body, how it works and what we can do, to be healthy, strong, resilient and beautiful.

Our body has its own natural timing, a rhythm that weaves through every hour of our day and night. Intrinsically connected to Nature, it’s like an internal maestro — and it’s called our circadian rhythm.

To help you get in tune with this biological beat, I’ve put together this Knowledge Hub of key terms that I found helpful in my learning journey and thought you might too. Think of this as your personal wellness dictionary – your little yellow book of light.  My goal is to empower you with knowledge — after all, understanding is the first step to change, and from there we grow, evolve, become stronger and inspire others. I hope you enjoy diving into all things wellness and I wish you much happy learning!

A-E of Circadian Health

A

ALAN – Artificial Light at Night

Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) is a term used to represent the light coming from man-made sources once the sun has set and during our nocturnal hours. The sources can range widely from our city street lamps to residential lighting and industrial lighting, to even the glow coming from towering billboards and storefront displays.

Artificial Light at Night pierces through the darkness. Who hasn’t looked up at a beautiful starry filled sky in awe when away from the city and all its constant bombardment of lights. Artificial light at night reshapes our night environment, changes what nature had intended for us and what is healthy for us. Here are just some of the disruptions ALAN causes for us and our wildlife.

Our circadian rhythm and internal body clock are guided by the cycle of day and night. At night, artificial light suppresses the production of our vital hormone, melatonin, amongst a host of other things. This in turn has been associated with causing sleep disorders, metabolic irregularities, mental health issues and has even been linked to an increased risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer in women.

For our wildlife, ALAN can disrupt wildlife behaviors like migration, reproduction, and predation. Places like Maui have introduced laws and strict guidelines regarding outdoor lighting in an effort to reduce the harm being done to wildlife whilst international organisations like Dark Sky, work to protect our environment and communities from the harmful effects of light pollution through education, conservation and various programs.

ATP – Adenosine Triphosphate

ATP, or adenosine triphosphate, is known as “the fuel of life”. It is a small, mighty molecule that powers almost everything we do and is referred to as the energy currency of our bodies.

ATP is made by our mitochondria through a process called cellular respiration. Our mitochondria takes the energy from the food we eat and converts that glucose into ATP via aerobic (with oxygen), or anaerobic (without oxygen), respiration.

ATP is something we all owe a huge thanks to every day and every time we get up, move, go shopping, go to work, do that yoga class and basically live. You can think of ATP like fuel for a car. If a car runs out of fuel, it ain’t moving. For us and living organisms, ATP is the essential building block for life and without it, we wouldn’t have the fuel or power to perform the physiological functions needed to stay alive.

Autophagy

Autophagy (pronounced awe-tof-agy) is our body’s way of cleaning up the house. Just like Pac-Man munches away on dots, our cells use autophagy to break down and recycle old, damaged proteins and cellular components.

This process helps to get rid of cells called “zombie cells” or senescent cells. Zombie cells are old, damaged cells that no longer function properly but refuse to die off. As we age, these zombie cells can linger in our body and contribute to various age-related health problems, such as chronic disease and inflammation and can harm nearby tissues.

Autophagy is induced when our body is under stress, such as during intermittent fasting or exposure to high temperatures like when having a sauna. This stress activates special enzymes called ATGs, autophagy-related genes, which are like power pellets that help Pac-Man chomp through the maze quicker. They help our cells identify and break down the old, damaged proteins, recycling them into new, healthy building blocks, making us healthier, happier and stronger.

B

Biophysics

Biophysics is the physics that controls our biology.

To the mitochondriac, biophysics is more important to our health than our diet, the exercise we get, our genes and the toxins around us. It is the master in charge of our body. It determines our wellness (or illness), based on the forces of physics that control our mitochondria and biorhythms which are light, water and magnetism.

Of course, other factors like food, exercise and lifestyle choices can and do contribute positively to our health and wellbeing, it’s just we may not get the full benefit (or perhaps even the half benefit) of these, if we’re not paying attention to biophysics and our biorhythms.

Blue Light

Blue light is part of the visible spectrum of light which can be perceived by the human eye. It is characterised by its high energy and short wavelength and lies in the range of approximately 380 to 500 nanometers. Its higher energy level relative to other colors on the visible spectrum, such as red or green, reflects its unique characteristics and its effects on our health and wellbeing.

In everyday life, we are exposed to blue light from a few different sources:

• Sunlight: The sun is our most natural and primary source of blue light. Peaking at midday, it helps to wake us up, boosts our alertness, helps our memory and brain function, and elevates our mood. Our exposure to blue light also helps to regulate our body’s natural wake and sleep cycle and helps to ensure our circadian rhythm is in tune. Within nature, blue light is present in conjunction with red and orange light, which helps to balance the blue light out.
• Digital Screens: The light emitted by our devices, such as our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and televisions, lacks the red and orange balancing light that appears with blue light in nature. This makes this blue light unhealthy for us and very different to what we experience in nature.
  To make matters worse, the adverse effects of this type of blue light is further exacerbated by the fact that we are continually exposed to this type of blue light for extended hours and periods of time and secondly, because we’re exposed to blue light during times of the day when blue is not present in nature ie during night time and after sunset.
• Artificial Lighting: LED lighting and fluorescent bulbs also emit a significant amount of blue light compared to incandescent bulbs. As per the blue light from digital screens, the blue light from lighting is detrimental to our health, sleep patterns and circadian rhythm, especially when we’re exposed to it at night and after our sun has set

Tightly connected to ALAN above and artificial light at night, blue light at night is associated with a host of adverse health effects such as disruption of circadian rhythm, increased glucose levels, headaches and migraines, sleep disturbances, blurred vision, eye strain, fatigue, retina damage, lowers Vitamin E, impaired cognitive function, lowers melatonin production and risk of obesity and metabolic issues.

Brown Fat

Brown fat, also known as brown adipose tissue, is a type of fat found in the body that burns calories to generate heat. Unlike white fat, which stores energy, brown fat is metabolically active and can help regulate body temperature and support weight management by increasing energy expenditure.

Exposure to cold temperatures, a practice known as cold therapy or cold exposure, activates brown fat. When the body experiences cold, brown fat cells increase their activity to produce heat through a process called non-shivering thermogenesis. This not only helps maintain core body temperature but also enhances the body’s metabolic rate, potentially helping in weight loss and improving metabolic health. Regular cold exposure, such as ice baths or cold showers, can thus stimulate brown fat activity, leading to various health benefits such as improved insulin sensitivity, reduced inflammation, and increased calorie burning.

C

Circadian Rhythm

Our Circadian Rhythm is our internal, 24-hour cycle and body clock that regulates the physiological processes in our body, including our sleep-wake cycle, hormone release times, digestion and our body temperature. Reacting to light and darkness in our environment, it aligns these functions with the day-night cycle.

Our circadian rhythm is like a drumbeat from nature that sets the pace for our waking and sleeping, and what happens throughout our 24 hour day. Disruptions to our circadian rhythm, largely caused by modern day living and a disconnection from nature, affects our overall physical, mental, emotional health and wellbeing and most certainly impacts on our health span and lifespan.

Cold Therapy

Cold therapy is the process of exposing the body to cold temperatures with the goal being, to elicit the body’s natural physiological responses to the cold. It includes activities such as cold showers, cold plunges, ice baths, or professional cryotherapy sessions (for the more extreme or professional athlete).

Cold therapy has been shown to have many health benefits including enhancing our circadian rhythms, improving the cardiovascular system, improving sleep, reducing inflammation, improving mental health and strengthening the immune system, to name just a few.

Personally, I think cold therapy is an absolute game changer and is one of my Top 3 things that I recommend! If you want to find your inner warrior and see how strong you are, just try and have a cold shower every day for a month. I promise, you won’t be the same.

D

Deuterium

Deuterium is a hydrogen atom, which unlike normal hydrogen atoms, also contains a neutron in its nucleus.

Deuterium molecules are found all around us. It’s in the air, in the food we eat and the liquids we drink, where it gets passed onto us. Our modern environment and lifestyle also exposes us to higher deuterium levels. Factors such as stress, lack of proper sleep, overeating and lack of exercise all contribute to the burden of deuterium depletion.

As amazing humans, we have a capacity to deplete the deuterium we accumulate in our body, however we can only process a certain deuterium level, and once that capacity has been exceeded, our body starts to accumulate deuterium within us. High deuterium levels in our body can have negative health impacts causing chronic fatigue, metabolic problems, premature ageing and cancer.

There are ways ot reduce our exposure to deuterium such as eating foods with lower deuterium levels, getting regular sleep, exercising and drinking uncontaminated water.

DHA – Docosahexaenoic Acid

DHA or Docosahexaenoic acid is a type of omega-3 fat. Found in oily fish, such as salmon and anchovies, it is celebrated for its health benefits such as reducing inflammation, reducing the risk of heart disease and chronic diseases, and for supporting brain function and eye health.

On top of all that, DHA is a very special fat that can convert sunlight into DC electricity and back again which is why its especially prized in the mitochondriacs world.

E

Earthing

Earthing, otherwise known as grounding, is the simple act of making direct contact with the surface of our Earth — be it the grass, soil, sand, or water. This direct contact allows for an electron exchange, as we absorb the naturally occurring electrical charges of our earth. As human beings, we have to remember, that we are electrical beings after all – our cells transmit multiple electrical charges which govern our heart rate, muscle movement, nervous system and more.

Anyone can practice earthing by simply walking barefoot or lying down on the ground. This allows our body to absorb free electrons which can act as powerful antioxidants that neutralise free radicals – which are the nasty unstable molecules that can cause damage to our cells and the tissues in our bodies.

Earthing is finally being give the credit it deserves and not just seen as some woo woo practice. Some of the health benefits are improved sleep and circadian health balance, reduction in inflammation and chronic pain, reduction in stress, increased energy and wellbeing and just feeling happier and better.  Who doesn’t feel better after walking barefoot on the beach or just connecting with nature? There is a reason for this and it’s called earthing.

EMF – Electromagnetic Field

Electromagnetic Fields, or EMFs, are invisible areas of energy often referred to as radiation and the use of electrical power and various forms of modern technology. These energy fields are a part of our daily environment and are produced by both natural sources like the sun and human-made sources such as electrical appliances, mobile phones, lighting and power lines.

For the health conscious warrior and for our purposes, the conversation around EMF usually centres around non-native EMF (nnEMF) which implies any man made frequencies including radiofrequency radiation, microwave radiation, magnetic fields, electric fields and dirty electricity and the ramifications of these fields on our wellbeing.

Whilst non-native EMFs are unfortunately unavoidable and everywhere in our tech-savvy world, there is a lot of evidence around the effects that prolonged exposure to certain types of nnEMF levels can have on our health. Some of the ever growing list of products emitting nnEMFs which we need to be mindful of include mobile phone towers, electricity poles, outlets and wiring, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, smart phones, tablets, televisions, ear pods, household appliances and every kind of wireless technology gadget including the wireless mouse I am using right now.

Source: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/emf

Epigenetics

Epigenetics is the science of how environmental factors can change the way our genes work and as a result, alter our physical traits and behaviours. Epigenetic changes do not change our DNA sequence but changes how our body reads a DNA sequence.

This is good news for us all. It means our environment controls our biology much more than we may suspect and gives us the opportunity to change ourselves by changing our environment.