Dewayne Hillman

Geomagnetics and society interact in weekly and broader multiseptans underlying health and environmental integrity

Evidence for the ubiquity and partial endogenicity of about-weekly (circaseptan) components and multiples and/or submultiples thereof (the multiseptans) accumulates as longer and denser records become available. Often attributed to a mere response to the social schedule, circaseptan components now have been documented to characterize environmental variables related to primarily non-photic solar effects. Plausibly, like circadians, circaseptans are anchored in genomes, from bacteria to humans, via both an internal and external evolution. If so, circaseptans, like circadians, may be found in the absence of a 7-day schedule, whereas the social schedule may play a synchronizing role and be responsible for the detection of prominent weekly variations in population statistics. The wobbliness of multiseptans and other components of some environmental time structures (chronomes) may correspond to the wobbliness of multiseptans found in cardiovascular morbidity statistics. Here, the latter stem primarily, but not exclusively, from an extensive database on the incidence of daily calls for an ambulance in Moscow, Russia from 1979-1981. A modulation of multiseptans and other chronome components of both environmental and biological variables by the about 11-year solar activity cycle (and of other low-frequency signals reviewed elsewhere) may account for prior controversies and scepticism about a variety of non-photic effects on biota. This is notably the case when relatively short series are analyzed without consideration of effects of unassessed long-term variations; this is the task of the new field of chronomics. In the spectral element of the chronomes of geophysical and biospherical variability, there are natural near weeks,apart from any precise 7-day periodicity.

Circadian and circaseptan (about-7-day) free-running physiologic rhythms of a woman in social isolation

An investigation into the time structure of rhythms in the absence of a clock during prolonged human social isolation is presented. A clinically healthy woman lived underground and her systolic, mean arterial, and diastolic blood pressure and her heart rate were automatically monitored most of the time during 14 weeks. She also self-measured, several times during wakefulness, her oral and axillary temperature. A circadian period slightly longer than 24 h came to the fore for all variables investigated, both by linear-nonlinear rhythmometry and by chronobiologic serial sections on the data obtained from the middle of the second week of isolation for the ensuing 97 days. In heart rate, an about-seven-day (circaseptan) rhythm was also found, with a confidence interval that did not overlap the precise seven-day trial period, notably during the first seven weeks. Some loose coupling of rhythms in metabolism gauged by core temperature and the heart rate is demonstrated for two components of the physiologic rhythm spectrum, the circadian of several variables and the circaseptan of heart rate.<<ETX>>

Geographically selective assortment of cycles in pandemics: meta-analysis of data collected by Chizhevsky

In the incidence patterns of cholera, diphtheria and croup during the past when they were of epidemic proportions, we document a set of cycles (periods), one of which was reported and discussed by A. L. Chizhevsky in the same data with emphasis on the mirroring in human disease of the ~11-year sunspot cycle. The data in this study are based on Chizhevsky’s book The Terrestrial Echo of Solar Storms and on records from the World Health Organization. For meta-analysis, we used the extended linear and nonlinear cosinor. We found a geographically selective assortment of various cycles characterizing the epidemiology of infections, which is the documented novel topic of this paper, complementing the earlier finding in the 21st century or shortly before, of a geographically selective assortment of cycles characterizing human sudden cardiac death. Solar effects, if any, interact with geophysical processes in contributing to this assortment.

Chronobiologically Interpreted Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring in Health and Disease

To detect vascular variability anomalies (VVAs), a blood pressure and heart rate profile around the clock for at least 7 days is a start. As a minimum, measurement every 60 or preferably 30 minutes for a week is needed, to be continued if abnormality is found, to assess the about 24-hour (circadian) variability that exists in all individuals. As a first dividend, one then also obtains a glimpse of 2 of the very many longer-than-circadian periodicities, the biological half-week and week. Certainly if we can have sensors and computer chips in our cars that continuously monitor the pressure over a tires life, we should be able to do the same job for ourselves for diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. Healthcare today emphasizes wellness with recommendations for exercise and a proper diet, yet these evaluations may not be adequate. BP may be measured at a visit to the doctor or before an exercise session, along with measuring body weight and performing a physical exam. The seeds of disease are planted long before they are visible, and what appears to be normal from a conventional point of view may in fact be abnormal. Hidden alterations of physiological function, masked by the bodys remarkable adaptive capabilities, may become visible through a new diagnostic and therapeutic realm—-chronobiology—-that reveals hitherto unseen abnormalities. The tools of chronobiology may yield additional dividends, such as the detection of physiological “loads” related to stress and stress relief and the undesirable effects of space weather upon personal events such as sudden cardiac death, societal events like terrorism and war, and natural disasters. Chronobiologically interpreted automatic ambulatory BP and heart rate (HR) monitoring (C-ABPM) may detect the antecedents of these types of events. C-ABPM is of interest in preventive cardiology, since it reveals new diagnoses as vascular variability anomalies (VVAs) and renders previous conventional diagnoses more reliable, such as that of an elevated BP. These VVAs include MESOR (midline-estimating statistic of rhythm)-hypertension, an elevation of the MESOR, which is diagnosed, like all other VVAs, only after 1 or preferably several replications of 7-day around-the-clock BP monitoring with available, affordable, and unobtrusive instrumentation. The recommendation for continuous C-ABPM recognizes several principles that constitute inseparably intertwined contributors to severe cardio-, cerebro- and renovascular diesase. C-ABPM gauges wear and tear of genetics, physical loads, and in particular mental stress placed upon individuals from “womb to tomb” by daily life, including weather in extraterrestrial space as well as that on earth, as a continuous surveillance paradigm preventing us from flying blind to a change from less than 5% to near 100% in the risk of a stroke within 6 years.

Social Chronobiology: Circadian Activation Rhythms of Married Couples

16 couples who had been married about 8½ yr. indicated level of activation every 4 hr. on each of 6 days and twice each day completed the Interpersonal Conflict Scale. Body temperatures were recorded each hour. Analyses showed group rhythms in scores, individual rhythms in some scores. Use of this information in resolving conflict seems possible.

Cardiovascular rhythms, their adjustment to schedule change and shift work

With illustrative chronobiologic methodology, the rules of rhythm shifting by work schedule manipulation are reviewed with reference to self-measured or ambulatory blood pressure and heart rate. The literature on the cardiovascular performance of shift workers studied with miniaturized devices or by self-measurement is reviewed and the systolic blood pressure status of 36 police officers presented. 53% of these officers had blood pressure excess. The cosinor approach defines blood pressure characteristics and their deviation with respect to those of healthy peers by fitting cosine curves for assessing static and dynamic parameters. Some of these chronobiologic endpoints are introduced in the minicourse to stimulate their use in particular for individuals under a burden such as police work on shifting schedules.<<ETX>>

Beyond a Spotcheck-Based Health Care: Thank You, Ram Bahadur Singh

Dr. Fabien DeMeester opens this issue with a statement in well-deserved praise of Prof. Ram Bahadur Singh. With Dr. Singhs bioand bibliography, Dr. DeMeester covers contributions to cardiology, nutrition and life-style. He then singles out cholesterol and the omega 6:3 ratio of unsaturated fatty acids to warn, in harmony with Dr. Singhs view, that current diets represent a trend toward what may be called involution, rather than evolution. Dr. DeMeester thereafter notes the need for a reversal of this trend (and has just implemented a pilot study toward this goal). This updating and concluding note expresses thanks to both Dr. Singh and Dr. DeMeester.