Discuss the Disruption of Biological Rhythms

Discuss the breaking of biological rhythms 24m One slip of disruption of biological rhythms is due to turn on work and interchange retrogress. This disrupts your easeing pattern because it means you be required to be alert at darkness, so need to quietude during the day. This reverses and disrupts your circadian rhythm, becoming desynchronised where it is no longer entrained by EZs. There ar many consequences of desynchronisation such as slumber deprivation. channelize workers find it hard to sleep during the day because of the EZs such as light and hale disturbances that accompaniment you awake.This means shift workers find it even more difficult to stay awake at night time because they check had a poor quality daytime sleep. This then affects their sleeplessness. Night workers often acquaintance a circadian trough of decreased alertness during their shifts. For example Boivin engraft that cortisol levels are at their lowest between 12 and 4am, which is the primet ime a night worker, would be working. This means they feature low alertness and decreases the efficiency of their job. There are besides many effects on health due to shift work. A signifi micklet relationship has been found between shift work and organ disease.For example, Knutsson found that mess who worked shift work for more than 15 years were likely to develop heart disease than a non-shift worker. This may be due to the direct effect of desynchronisation in the circadian rhythm. Jet lag is another example of how biological rhythms can be go downed, but their effects are found to temporary, as travelling happens once in a while, whereas shift work may be somebodys job which they rent to be doing constantly both day. However, our biological rhythms are not equipped to act with sudden and large changes in our rhythms.It has been found that they need approx. 1 day to adjust as all(prenominal) time zone is crossed. This is because the dorsal portion of the SCN needs several cycles to fully resynchronise, as it is less dainty to light. When the dorsal portion of the SCN is adjusting we experience disruption in the form of kilobyte lag. It has been found that it is easier to fly from eastern hemisphere to west, as you need to stay up later, so your biological rhythms can adjust by you set downting more sleep in the morning, whereas west to east you must wake up earlier so is harder to adjust.This can be demonstrated in a study where an American baseball team who traveled west to east saw their wins drop 37% due to phase advance where they come to get up earlier in the morning, causing a reduction in their overall performance. There are many real world applications that have derived from the effects of shift work and jet lag, enabling wad to live alongside these disruptions in their biological rhythms. These are mainly targeted at shift work. It has been found that camion drivers are prone to falling asleep at the wheel on night shifts.Legislatio n has been put in place to prevent this from happening. They now have a monitor in the cars that produce a sound telling the driver when they should have a nap to ensure they are not sleep take and avoid accidents from occurring. It has also been found that spate should have lambent lights at their work on a night shift to act as an EZ overriding the endogenous pacemakers. This could be supported by Gronfiers study which found circadian rhythms were able to be entrained longer than 24 hours by using bright light pulses known as modulated light exposure.However, Boivin found that artificial lighting is only pretty effective in overriding the rhythm. Dim lighting which is mainly used in places such as hospitals failed to backing participants awake. This may be because the pineal gland is detecting an absence of light meaning melatonin is beingness produced which induces sleep. Therefore, in response to this research nurses who work in hospitals should have bright lights around t he workplace to keep them awake. Melatonin has been found to be a miracle cure for shift lag and jet lag. This is the hormone that induces sleep.This means that people experiencing sleep disruption can take melatonin tablets in order to sleep during the day or when they have finished their shift. This is supported by Herxheimer and Petrie who found when melatonin was taken near to bed time it was very effective. However, if melatonin was taken at the wrong time of day it could delay their adaptation to changing sleep patterns. However, these two explanations and examples of sleep disruption may be reductionist as it fails to ignore other parts that may disrupt the soulfulnesss sleep patterns.The deficiency of sleep may be associated with them having to go to bed at uncommon times. This may lead to the person experiencing social disruption as they find it difficult to meet with their friends or spend time with their family. This may lead to high cortisol levels as they are stres sed with the lack of social interaction. High cortisol levels may be intervening with their sleep quality making them sleep deprived. Therefore, there are other intervening factors other than going to bed in the daytime.This can also be displayed in jet lag, where social customs are involved in entraining the biological rhythms. When you are travelling you are encouraged to eat and sleep at the same time as the province you are in. This could also help reduce symptoms of jet lag such as nausea. Timing of meals can re set the biological clock in the liver. Eating at the same increases enzyme production at the right time for digestion and avoids stomach upset leading the nausea.Therefore, social customs are an important factor to consider in the effects of sleep disruption and how they play a major role. The effects of disruption of circadian rhythms can vary considerably between different individuals. Some people may have circadian rhythms that try to adjust and change in response t o shift work or jet lag, or other peoples circadian rhythms which dont change at all. Reinberg found that people who gave up shift work because they couldnt cope had constantly changing rhythms, whereas happy shift workers had rhythms that didnt change at all.This suggests that it may not be the shift work itself that is causing the sleep deprivation it may be due to individuals circadian rhythm and its ability to adjust or cope in different rhythms. Therefore, peoples whos rhythms changed constantly may have experienced imbalance in neurotransmitters or raised cortisol levels from stress, meaning they experienced sleep deprivation. It would have to be asked whether shift work and jet lap is a disruption in biological rhythms for every individual, or whether some people are able to cope without the rhythm trying to adapt at all.