I came along an article (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/enter-the-chronotherapists/?scp=5&sq=sex%20antidepressant&st=cse) in the New York Times that returns to the ever-impressive, often revisited topic of circadian rhythm. I doubt I have to convince you that maintaining a rhythm is important – we have all taken bio basis (not to mention the likelihood that personal experience comes into play here – everyone regrets those all-nighters that leave us achy and irritable the next day). But just how critical is circadian rhythm?
It turns out that messing with circadian rhythms can have pretty devastating effects; living in consistent strife with your bodily rhythms can have major health effects. For example, eating in the middle of the night can lead to significant weight gain. An experiment was conducted where one group of mice were allowed to eat only during waking hours and the other was allowed to eat only during sleeping hours. After six weeks, the mice whose cycles were disrupted were significantly fatter than the control group. I guess there goes the midnight snack. Apparently, exposure to light during sleep, even briefly, is enough to raise melatonin levels and reset the clock. Scientists have found that exposure to light during sleep is correlated with breast cancer. Consistently, women who are totally blind have a lower incidence with breast cancer than those who are not.
Furthermore, there is evidence that working with the subtleties of your circadian rhythm can greatly benefit the body as well. Evidence suggests that drugs taken to reduce cholesterol levels work best if taken before sleep; chemotherapy drugs have a “best” time of day to be administered to have a greater effect. Hypothetically, if there is a time when the effect of a drug can be boosted, that would potentially mean that the dosage could be lowered and thus side effects could decrease as well – pretty exciting stuff.
This leads me to interpret that since all processes in our bodies form a rhythm, there may be opportune times affect a variety of behaviors. What if there is an opportune time to take an anti-depressant? Or for a child to take their ADHD medication? And the list could continue for ages…