Table Of ContentBiological Clocks:
Your Owner's Manual
Biological Clocks:
Your Owner's Manual
Sue Binkley
he harwood academic publishers
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Binkley, Sue
Biological clocks: your owner's manual
1. Biological rhythms
I. Title
612'.022
ISBN 90-5702-534-5
To
H. Randolph Tatem III, MD, my husband
Shelley Binkley, MD and Kyra Tatem O'Brien
my children
Connor Baker, my grandchild
and
Rich Zeiter, the brave hero who fished my hypothermic
carcass out of t he 44°P . Roaring Fork River
CONTENTS
Preface IX
Acknowledgments XI
I BIOLOGICAL RHyTHMS............................................... I
1 Fooling Around With Time........................................ 3
2 More Seriously................ ............................................. 11
3 Methods of Rhythm Measurement............................. 21
4 Entrainment............................ .. ....... ... ......................... 31
5 Freeruns....................................................................... 41
6 More Related to Freeruns.............. ............ ................. 45
7 Resetting...................................................................... 51
8 Can the Clock Be Stopped?........ ................................. 57
9 Temperature and Chemicals........ .............. .................. 63
10 Seasons and Photoperiodism.......... ............ .............. ... 69
11 Circarhythms........................................................ ...... . 77
12 Biological Clockworks.................... ...... .. ...... ...... ......... 85
13 Human Rhythms........ ................................................. 93
14 The End of the Whole Mess.......... .................... .......... 109
FIGURES .... ...... ...... .............................................. .. ........... 123
II APPENDICES ...................................................... .............. 149
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations.. .............................. 151
Societies.......... ................................................. .................... 158
10urnals ............................................................................ ... 158
Software....................................................................... ...... . 158
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. ................................... 161
viii Contents
III MEASURE YOUR OWN CIRCADIAN RHyTHM ....... 175
About the Author ................................................................ 195
Notes and References .......................................................... 199
Index 213
PREFACE
This book, like Gaul, is divided into three parts.
I don't really expect people to read it beginning on page I and
continuing to The End of the Whole Mess (chapter 14). Human
Rhythms (chapter 13) probably has the information that w ill interest
you most. Perhaps y ou only want t o measure your o wn rhythm using
section III. Freeruns ( chapter 5) and Entrainment ( chapter 4 ) contain
the "guts" of h ow the rhythms work.
Section I explains biological rhythms as I have loved them for a
quarter of a century. Egad! That's a long time ... p robably longer
than many of y ou have been alive! For m e, biological clocks are my
old friends.
The sun and moon dance with the earth. The seasons perform a
stately minuet. The night dances with the day. We creatures of t he
earth are exquisitely adapted to waltz with the sun. Imagine ice
dancing, where you are the follower and your celestial partner l eads,
and, yet, if y our hand is released, you can skate on your own. You
may prefer to think of these celestial events as things that happen
outside of you. After all, you probably sleep, as I do, inside in a
cocoon lit by artificial lights with its silence broken by an alarm
clock. Perhaps y ou, as I do, make an occasional night-time e xcursion
to squint at the sky. Last week, from my doorstep, I saw a comet,
fragile bride Hyakutake in a misty veil, dragging her train as she
searched the Zodiac for her groom. I watched the earth cast a dirty
shadow on the moon, a lunar eclipse that made "the man in the
moon" look like a silver clown wearing a beanie.
Figures have been collected in one section for easy comparison. I
suggest a quick look at them first off.
Section II contains the pedantic appendices- a glossary and an
annotated b ibliography. This is supposed to be a serious book, right?
