These are the body's reactions to the time change: UNAM

• April 25, 2024

Today started the winter schedule! But what happens in our body when we change hours?

Our body performs functions in certain periods such as eating and sleeping. When the change of summer schedule , the organism is forced to modify the order of these between itself and also with the environment.

This alteration is associated with circadian rhythms, that is, the internal times that organize the physiological activities of our body in function of light-dark cycles.

The brain sends orders to the organs through the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a structure that is responsible for ordering the organs to regulate sleep, temperature and hunger, "says the doctor Raúl Aguilar, researcher of the Cellular Physiology Institute of the UNAM.

The most perceptible circadian rhythms are those of break and the feeding. A person is usually sleepy or hungry at a similar time.

Although it is likely that you can not always meet those needs due to night work or travel to another country, situations that have been studied by chronobiologists.

When these processes are altered by the schedule changes , Dr. Aguilar adds, we feel fatigue, irritability, digestive problems or lack of memory.

If a person travels from one continent to another he suffers a decompensation in the schedule called Jet lag. While it is difficult to avoid symptoms, you can prevent them with a good feeding and mainly sleeping during trip .  

Your body will take approximately two days to adapt, because the biological rhythms occur every 24 hours and your internal clock is readjusted by a new period of day and night.

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