J Appl Biomed 4:1-38, 2006 | DOI: 10.32725/jab.2006.001

Chronobiology's progress. Part I, season's appreciations 2004-2005: time-, frequency-, phase-, variable-, individual-, age- and site-specific chronomics

Franz Halberg^1,*, Germaine Cornélissen¹, George Katinas¹, Levan Tvildiani², Marina Gigolashvili³, Ketevan Janashia⁴, Tim Toba¹, Miguel Revilla⁵, Philip Regal¹, Robert B. Sothern¹, Hans W. Wendt¹, Zhengrong Wang⁶, Michal Zeman⁷, Rita Jozsa⁸, R.B. Singh⁹, Gen Mitsutake¹⁰, Sergei M. Chibisov¹¹, Jong Lee¹, Dan Holley¹², James E. Holte¹, Robert P. Sonkowsky¹, Othild Schwartzkopff¹, Patrick Delmore¹³, Kuniaki Otsuka¹⁰, Earl E. Bakken¹⁴, Jerzy Czaplicki¹⁵, the International BIOCOS Group

¹ Halberg Chronobiology Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

² Department of Internal Medicine, Tbilisi State Medical University, Tbilisi, Georgia

³ Georgian National Astrophysical Observatory, Tbilisi, Georgia

⁴ Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia

⁵ University of Valladolid, Spain

⁶ Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

⁷ Department of Animal Physiology, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

⁸ University Pecs, Pecs, Hungary

⁹ Nutrition and Heart Centre, Halberg Hospital & Research Institute, Moradabad, India

¹⁰ Tokyo Women's Medical University, Medical Center East, Tokyo, Japan

¹¹ People's Friendship University of Russia, Moscow, Russia

¹² San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA

¹³ Medtronic Inc., Fridley, MN, USA

¹⁴ North Hawaii Community Hospital Inc., Kamuela, HI, USA

¹⁵ Institut de Pharmacologie et de Biologie Structurale CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

New components of transdisciplinary spectra or known components in new variables in us, matching those around us, are being mapped. Their hardly trivial interactions associated with the good and bad around us - from religiosity to crime and war - are being rendered measurable, for the eventual development of countermeasures to the diseases of societies and nations. Internal cycles not only underlie life itself and underlie our evolving genetics at all levels of organization; they also constitute the essential control and reference information in all transdisciplinary science. In preparing for travel to Mars and other missions in space that may take more than a year, let us do what is immediately practicable. Transyears may have very small amplitudes yet are associated with sudden cardiac death in some terrestrial locations; if they should play a role in these electrical incidents of the heart, among others like myocardial infarction and stroke, they will jeopardize lengthy missions in extraterrestrial space, away from hospitals.
The likelihood of stroke or cardiac death can be immediately reduced by chronobiologically assessing blood pressure and heart rate variability and by optimizing the efficacy of timed treatment rather than relying on an unacceptable and often inaccurate spotcheck and treating by convenience rather than pertinence. Needed are: detection of nocturnal abnormality when medication may no longer be effective (or is too effective) neither seen during office visits by day; detection of circadian hyper-amplitude-tension (CHAT) associated with a risk of stroke and kidney disease greater than other risks (including "hypertension" when all risks are assessed concomitantly); detection of CHAT as high risk among normotensives who may not need anti-hypertensive medication; individualized inferential statistical testing to determine whether a drug or non-drug intervention such as autogenic training (relaxation) is effective and for how long (detecting any initial and later success or failure), some of which conditions otherwise are not found without chronobiology; individualization of treatment timing, since the same dose of the same medication can further lower the subject's blood pressure average and circadian amplitude when the timing of daily administration is optimized, as ascertained by sequential testing and parameter tests.
Thus, we save lives by monitoring and assessing, and if need be treating, vascular disease risk through chronobiologically interpreted 24-hour or preferably longer (24-hour/7-day) blood pressure and heart rate variability. Abnormalities in the variability of blood pressure and heart rate, impossible to find during a conventional office visit (the latter aiming at the fiction of a "true" blood pressure), can raise cardiovascular disease risk in the next six years from 4% to 100%.

Keywords: chronobioethics; gliding spectra; blood pressure; heart rate; travel to Mars

Received: December 22, 2005; Published: March 31, 2006  Show citation