That's Fit

While you're busy going about your day -- eating, sleeping, exercising, working, having fun -- you're body is busy too. You might even say that in a certain way, it has a mind of it's own. Your body goes through certain processes at the same time each day, a phenomenon known as a circadian rhythm.

Newsweek has seven interesting facts about your body rhythms. For instance, did you know that heart attacks are far more common in the early hours? Births are more likely in the morning or early afternoon, as are, surprisingly, suicides. If you want to learn a little more about circadian rhythms, check out Newsweek for more interesting facts.

I didn't even realize I was tired, but this warm, sunny weather has given me such a jolt of energy, I can see now that I was really dragging those last few weeks of winter. In our busy lives, energy can be a limited resource. Between jobs, families, obligations and stress, poor eating and exercise habits, and not enough sleep, it's easy to find yourself run down before your day has run out.

CNN has 10 fresh, new, and interesting ways to boost your energy. If you're finding yourself falling into that 3 P.M. slump or just wish that you had more get-up-and-go, these are some simple tips to try. They include:

• Expose yourself to more natural light sources to reset your natural circadian rhythms.
• Eat more protein.
• Do a good deed.
• Try white tea.
• Try acupuncture or Reiki.
• Turn off your technology.
• Focus on cleaning up your sleep habits.
  
  

Want to learn more? Check out the gallery below for some energy-boosting snack ideas.

Do you find yourself jumping out of bed every morning, ready to face the day? Or is your best and brightest time in the late hours of the evening? Whether you're a morning person or a night owl depends on your habits, of course, but researchers working with skin cells recently discovered that your sleeping and waking habits may also be hard-wired in your genes.

When they took the skin cells of hardcore early risers and determined night people and made them glow according to their circadian rhythms, they found that the skin cells of morning people tended to fade out earlier than those who like to stay up late. And another gene associated with body rhythms was more active in those who preferred nights to mornings.

It wasn't cut and dried, exactly. Though the team found some associations between genes and circadian rhythms, they also realized that behavior can affect biology. That's probably a good thing, since we can't all have dream jobs that fit our preferred schedules!

When it comes to blood pressure, you really want to be a dipper. At night, most healthy people and many people with hypertension have blood pressures that "dip" lower than during the day. Health experts theorize that this dip gives the arteries a break. But for some patients with high blood pressure, that dip never comes, making them harder to treat.

A small Italian study found, however, that when hypertension patients changed just one of their medications to the evening, instead of the morning, nearly 90% of them became "dippers." Though more research needs to be done, many hope this is an advance that will help patients get better control over their blood pressure. Be sure to speak to your doctor before making any changes to your medication.

I never used to mind daylight savings time, and I usually adjusted to it pretty quickly. At least I thought I did. But then I had kids. Young children can't tell time, and therefore don't have the benefit of using the clock to adjust to the change. All they know is that their day is suddenly out-of-whack. In our house, that usually means a 4-7 days of waking up too early (or late), not being hungry at meal time, or being famished an hour before dinner, and generally just trying to gradually readjust.

But do we really readjust? Recent studies say that in the autumn, we generally adjust to the return to normal time pretty quickly. But in the spring, our bodies never biologically adjust when daylight savings time begins. Before electricity and the dawn of artificial light, people lived by the sun rising and setting, and our body's circadian rhythms still run that way.

As one expert points out, daylight savings time is only one way that we try to change our biological schedule. Lights, TVs, alarm clocks...these things all help us stay up late or get up early, no matter what the sun might be doing. He doesn't see anything inherently dangerous in this, or in daylight savings time itself. But people have long argued that the time change really isn't necessary, and you know what? I'm wondering if they could be right. What do you think?

There may be a prescription for jet-lag coming on the horizon, and from an unlikely source too. Viagra was shown to reduce or prevent time-change fatigue in recent tests on hamsters, which obviously opens a whole new potential way of dealing with the frustrations of long distance travel.

The active ingredient in Viagra, sildenafil, affects a messenger molecule that has to do with circadian rhythms and the body's internal clock -- higher doses of sildenafil means higher sensitivity to light differences and faster adjustment to changes.

The tests only included male hamsters, so the next step is "co-ed" testing and then on to mice. But maybe not that far off into the future the nasty side-effects of jet-lag will be curable with a little blue pill.

The holiday meal is over. There's a fierce battle being waged, and it's not the football game on TV. It's for rights to the couch and for who gets the most comfortable spot for the post-meal snooze.

Why do we get so sleepy after a large meal? Researchers at the University of Manchester think they've figured it out. Doing research on mice, they found that certain nerve cells in the brain work to keep us awake. When glucose levels rise, those same cells stop producing signals, making us want to sleep. Alternately, when we're hungry, those same nerve cells fire away -- keeping us alert to be on the look out for the next meal. (This may explain any late night trips to refrigerator, and why it's hard to sleep when you're hungry.)

Though this link is interesting, it seems more research is needed. We don't, for instance, feel tired after breakfast. And the afternoon slump many of us feel is more likely to be the cause of natural circadian rhythms than lunch. But researchers still think this finding may be helpful in treating obesity and eating disorders down the road. For the rest of us, it's just one more reason to take that brisk walk after dinner!