We never quite realize what finely tuned machines our bodies are until we do something to throw them off, like stay up all night or fly into a different time zone. It seems like our bodies should easily adapt to whatever situation we put them in, but our individual circadian rhythms—the ways our bodies function throughout a 24-hour period—say otherwise.
Circadian rhythms are ruled by body clocks that dictate whether we’re alert, sleepy, hungry, etc., and those clocks are affected by our environment. The first sign of light sends messages to our bodies to start the arousal process and the setting sun signals the production of melatonin to prepare us for sleep. When we work against our body clocks, we feel the ill effects—insomnia, lethargy, irritability. In order to perform optimally, we need to work with our circadian rhythms rather than against them. This is the idea behind chronotherapy, a new form of treatment being investigated in the medical community.
How Chronotherapy Works
Chronotherapy is an offshoot of chronobiology, the science of examining body clocks and their resulting biological rhythms and physiological responses. Drug chronotherapy uses a person’s circadian rhythms to figure out the best time to administer medication and how much to give the person. Proponents of this treatment believe that our biological cycles include certain points throughout a 24-hour day that allow medicine to have the most beneficial effect while minimizing possible negative side effects. This is quite different from the usual prescription of “once in the morning, once at night” given by many doctors.
Chronotherapy tries to find the time of day when medication will be most useful. After all, our circadian rhythms fluctuate throughout the day, and no two people’s rhythms are quite the same. Therefore, it makes sense that treatment should be more individualized, and by analyzing the inner workings of our body clocks, that is what chronotherapy attempts to achieve.
What It Can Treat
Knowledge and familiarity with chronotherapy is emerging within the medical field. It is being investigated for illnesses like asthma, hypertension, some forms of cancer, and sleep disorders.
Asthma
Researchers have determined that lung performance hits a low very early in the morning. This is when most people are asleep, so it makes it difficult to administer medication at this time. According to the FDA, this brought about the development of a slow-acting bronchodilator (a drug that relaxes the airways and makes breathing easier) called Uniphyl. Asthma sufferers take it in the evening, but the medicine doesn’t take effect until the morning hours when lung function drops substantially. This way the patients are able to sleep through the night and minimize the occurrence of attacks.
Hypertension
Blood pressure is at its highest when you wake up. The pumping blood allows you to get out of bed without your legs collapsing beneath you. However, for those who have hypertension (high blood pressure), this means an elevated risk of heart attacks between the hours of 6 a.m. and noon. Two studies analyzing the effects of two different slow-release drugs aimed at treating hypertension concluded that the potentially dangerous blood pressure spikes in the morning were reduced significantly when medication was taken the evening before. Medicine designed to start working in the morning, when the probability of heart attacks is highest, ultimately yielded better results.
Cancer
Current cancer treatments like chemotherapy often come with a slew of adverse effects. Chronotherapy uses the same medicines as chemotherapy, but the process focuses not only when the drugs will work best, but also when they will damage the body the least. There have been studies that suggest cancerous cells operate on a different schedule than healthy, normal cells. Chronotherapy seeks to pinpoint this precise time and begin treatment accordingly.
Those who work with this form of therapy have also found that adverse side effects are limited when the medicine is given at certain points of the day. For example, one drug used to treat colon cancer is administered during the night because that is when the diseased cells are most active, and people are better able to tolerate the medication during that time. Patients are also able to get treatment via portable pumps designed to release medicine at specific times so their daily lives are altered as little as possible.
