The Organ Clock

[djkvan]

Hi.

Anyone believe in the organ clock theory?


Bodily Organs Have Their Own Circadian Clocks

* Biology and Medicine

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Author:
Yo HongYi

Everybody knows the body has Circadian rhythms. Interestingly, scientists have discovered that the organs in our body are just like numerous independent beings with their own internal clocks.

Scientists believed that the circadian rhythm of a body was strictly controlled by the master clock located in the brain, but they now discovered that this is not true. In an article published in the May issue of Nature (Vol. 417, 78 - 83 (2002)), researchers from Harvard Medical School and some other research institutes reported an interesting discovery. By studying the tissues from the hearts and livers of mice, they discovered that the physiological activities of a body were controlled by the local circadian clocks of the organs in the body. The chiming of each organ clock triggers different waves of gene activities, which can be adjusted over time to accommodate new schedules and life paces. The different organ clocks appear to be strikingly idiosyncratic in appearance. For example, the clock located in the liver and the one in the heart use very different sets of genes to perform the functions that are basically the same. In the article, Weitz explained, 'Different tissues have to be cycling for different reasons. This allows organs to reset their activities according to their own priorities, which makes a lot of sense.'

The discovery shows that the organs have their own relatively independent metabolic activities. Ancient Chinese science actually regards these organs as independent lives. For example, the Tao school believes that our human body is a universe with various kinds of lives in it. Traditional Chinese medicine also treats each organ as an independent systems and each different organ with different attributes. They have their own independent life activities, while interacting with each other. For example, in traditional Chinese medicine, there is a theory of Five Elements: kidney belongs to water, liver belongs to wood, lung belongs to metal, pancreas belongs to soil, and so on. Different organs interact with each other via the principle of mutual-generation and mutual-inhibition among the Five Elements. Moreover, ancient Chinese science believes that all things in the world have their own spirits, and therefore one would pay attention to the time and season for picking tea leaves. In addition, there are strict requirements on the virtue of the persons who pick the herbs and teas. In a prescription of traditional Chinese medicine, different components play different roles, including the “emperor”, the “officials”, the “assistants”, and the “ambassador.” The belief that everything has its own spirit is consistent with scientific experiments.

References：　
1. Nature 417, 78 - 83 (2002); doi:10.1038/nature744
2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 072758.htm
3. Harvard Medical School (http://www.hms.harvard.edu/)

Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/20 ... 18330.html


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[panacea]

Haven't read it yet but it makes sense that complex living things that are required to do things precisely or at regular intervals would have a way of telling 'time', whether it be accurate to our sense of time or accurate to our bodies, probably the latter. Which means that if we were aging faster, our organs clocks might 'tick' faster, even though obviously the time outside of our body is still going at a constant speed.

[djkvan]

I have noticed feeling a certain way physically/mentally at certain times of day and for a while seemed to wake up at the same point in the night for no apparent reason. As I was only able to see a pattern after it was suggested that there is a pattern, I am reluctant to ascribe a particular organ's activity to the perceived events. As a parlour trick, it would be cool if it were true; as a science, very cool! TCM is thousands of years established, so...Not that age equals truth, more like with time comes the wisdom of observation. But how the hell do you observe organ activity. I suppose without tv one does have a lot of time on their hands to watch/observe other things. Life once moved at a different pace and perhaps the secrets of the universe reveal themselves to those who have/take the time to look.

[djkvan]

[panacea]

logic is a million times better than 'age' lol. for forever people believed in all kinds of things in the sky, and most still do, whether it be religions or believing in the hand-fed ideas of modern cooking, or diet. It's pretty much the same as it was in the medieval times, the majority is kept in the dark so the minority can propser, and I'm not just talking about within the U.S. or europe or w/e but the whole world. Ayurveda is a good example of 'wisdom by age' and it frankly sucks, even though it's a better approach than the modern 'patch it up with pills', it's not by much. The point is that through deep logical thinking, people come up with the best solutions possible, like, "perhaps our bodies use this for (this reason) because (everything has a reason behind it) and (if something doesn't appear to have a reason behind it is either flawed or has significant holes in the logic)." you can be 8 years old or 80 years old to understand that and it can be forgotten or rediscovered throughout time but it's always just as useful, there's no building upon the concept of logic just the complexity, whereas things like religions have to constantly adapt their beliefs to 'fit' into the context of new discoveries, logic automatically 'fits' into all truth (eventually).


So let's compare how logic beats age old 'wisdom'.

Take the concept of religion.
Can you prove logically that any religion has any basis?
Let's try and compare it to logic...
Logic says if something is true, it can be repeated and still make sense and be true,
Logically, if there were an all-knowing creator, he would have the intelligence to realize that human beings are completely dependent on their past, like all other animals, and have no absolute free choice, so a screening system for good, bad, heaven, hell, or any reward system would be ridiculous. If you don't agree with that, or understand it, also consider he would realize that human language could be construed, used for ill-purposes, etc, so a book would utterly make no sense. An all-knowing entity would realize that faith in and of itself is the belief in something that cannot be proven, and therefore the faith in a pink flamingo creating the universe is just as likely as a flying man, the only difference on Earth is that more people believe in the latter, giving it more social-weight, but absolutely none logically. So to anyone with a logical mind, this system would be unfair and completely ridiculous, so an all-knowing entity would never be satisfied with such a ridiculous plan.

There's about as many logical flaws in the concept of religion as there are words in all the religious texts, and to address them all would be exhausting, but you get that point that logically religion makes absolutely no sense at all, which is why the concept of faith is so strongly pushed in various religions, because faith means exactly that you believe in something despite what all logic tells you. The only thing that makes people do this, however, is not because it makes sense logically, but because it makes sense socially, to fit in, to go with the herd, and to be socially monkey-see-monkey-do, or another psychological reason such as it gives one comfort to believe in heaven, or gives one pride, or gives one SOMETHING besides logical explanation.

Everything else in reality however, has to have logical explanation...

Such as the concept of greed. I know it exists because for one I have it myself, others have it, I have percieved it, seen it, heard of it, and it makes logical sense that people would want more for themselves, as it is a shortterm benefit for ones own goals, and ones own goals are important because the world is a limited resource, and life is designed to want to survive. Logically this can be proven because if life wasn't designed to survive, it wouldn't exist. It would have no system in place to survive or replicate, and so it could never evolve to this complexity. The only contest to this logic is the idea of an all-knowing creator who somehow has always been in existence or was created by himself by some unknown freak accident or who is just too cool to understand or 'go there'. This obviously doesn't have any more logical bearing than a pink flamingo farted to make the world come true. Both can't be disproven, and both can't be proven, so both are false, whereas greed can be proven, and can't be disproven, so it is true.

IF we were to rely on age old wisdom however, we wouldn't be able to make sense of the world, as Allah would be true, christianity's God would be true, all the idols of the past would be true, the royals would be crowned by God and they would have the right to screw people sideways still, and democracy just wouldn't make sense, freedom wouldn't make sense, ayurveda would make more sense than any other health related concept, oh and let's not forget that sunworshipping would still make sense, because it was around for so long.

[panacea]

We should make a topic of outdated ideas lol, so right below 'cooking', 'consuming cows milk', and 'religion' I could put 'mowing a lawn', and then right below that, 'posessing a "lawn"'. lol I had to argue with my father that cutting freaking grass (which is just trying to grow from all the sun you gave it by cutting down the trees to make a lawn) is a ridiculous waste of time, and that you should be letting nature grow and if you want something to play in, let the trees stay and shade the ground so that grass can't have enough sunlight to grow a mile high.

even more freaking ridiculous is the act of wasting water to make a lawn grow, then using fossil fuels to cut it. LMFAO. and he has the nerve to tell me I need to grow up, I wonder if it's just to get cut down later.

[djkvan]

Your father probably derives pleasure from taking care of his lawn. In that sense it would be an extension of his passion for life and ability to care for things that he values. Grown ups find positive ways to direct their energies (some of which aren't so good for the planet, agreed) so that their lives can be full and happy. They also support the efforts of those that they care about who are finding their own paths to happiness rather than riding their asses about how they are doing it all wrong, because that stifles growth. That's probably what he meant by grow up, panacea. I think it virtuous to build a life that is sufficiently beautiful that one can sit back, relax enjoy the beauty of what they and others have created while attempting to share in the commonalities and celebrate (or ignore in some cases) the differences along the way.

[panacea]

he's not taking care of it though, no more than we are taking care of cows by chopping them up and making them into Mc nuggets. granted, he doesn't eat the grass, but he does chop it up with a machine, or get someone else to (who doesn't believe in it). Which is why he told me to grow up (I don't share his belief). Yes he does derive pleasure from buzz-cut grass, many people derive pleasure from Mc Nuggets, it doesn't make it efficient or healthy (not just for our bodies, but by diminishing our supply of resources, including gasoline and time.) You also could not say it's good excercise, even though excercise isn't needed if you live an active lifestyle, but rather than doing a negative task for excercise, you could easily tell someone to do a neutral one like briskly walking, or even running, for 'good' excercise. Even though you don't need it if you just use your body right in the first place... Anyway, I'm not interested in grown ups immediate happiness but rather what's best for everyone, hopefully in the future 'grown ups' like me will make my kids assemble some home made solar panels outside on the shaded grass to use for a real purpose (capturing the suns energy that's going to waste anyway and using it to, I don't know, keep us alive and warm during the winter). I'm not saying I'm angry at him or anyone for having traditional stubborn beliefs and not seeing the light, I'm just saying from a logical point of view that his particular belief in this matter doesn't make logical, efficient, sense. By the way beauty is in the eye of the beholder, no grass-image is uglier to me than grass altered by rapidly rotating metal to result in a buzz-cut. I'd rather it move in the wind, but more importantly, my view of a grasses beauty requires no harm, while his does (not just to the grass).

[djkvan]

Ha! I had written a long-winded response to your last post and I just noticed that it didn't post properly. It basically said live and let live, though. BTW I think lawn care is ludicrous. In the city of Vancouver the yards have beautifully cultivated gardens full of the local flora of the temperate rain forest. I barely notice the lawns here, though I don't think that most houses have much lawn space.

I am finding that the organ clock concept makes sense in terms of the way I experience hunger in waves throughout the day. 11am-1pm is a weird time of day for me, as it's generally the time where I experience certain physical/mental phenomena (mild irritability/fogginess; ethmoid sinus pressure).