You’ve heard of the circadian rhythm chart, haven’t you? It’s a chart showing the sleep/waking cycles by the hour. If you’ve ever seen a melatonin clock, you know this: The clock doesn’t work in isolation…it needs an external, time-telling source to keep running. The circadian clock is the source of time, and its job is to drive sleep patterns. In other words, it’s the “source” of your sleep patterns.
You see, when people, and especially animals, aren’t at their best, they start to show the symptoms. Circadian rhythms are the body’s natural internal circadian rhythms. So if you’re sleeping fine, then your Circadian Rhythm keeps you in tip-top shape. But when something goes wrong, your Circadian Rhythm gets out of sync, and things start to go awry. You can see how easy it is to mess up your internal rhythm with environmental conditions, such as light, temperature, and even activity level.
The good news is that scientists are developing new ways to more closely study the human circadian rhythm sleep system. A recent study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that a certain circadian rhythm-driven protein might be the key to better understanding and combating sleep disorders. The protein is called circadian transcription factor, or CTF. The study not only showed that this important protein is crucial for healthy sleep patterns, but the researchers also showed that it regulates and homeostasis many other genes throughout the body, including the major regulatory protein, Bmal1, which is crucial for circadian rhythm sleep homeostasis.