The Human Grand Complication

In the world of haute horology, the true masterpieces are the grand complications.

A testament to the unparalleled skill of a master watchmaker

The most basic definition for a complication is any mechanical watch function beyond simply telling the time. Watch complications include alarms, chronographs, and day or date displays.

So why is this relevant?

Our body is the grandest of complications.

Every cell has its own mechanism. A timer if you will that is set to start at a prompt, initiate a series of actions and assuming the prompt remains constant repeat.

Our prompt, since the beginning of time, was the solar day. The sun rising and falling and how that fits into our 24-hour cycle. The rise and fall acting as the primary prompts for the master clock and its co-ordinated complications.

We replaced that with artificial light, alarm clocks (sirens), stimulants and depressants that serve to start and stop this master clock and speed and slow the other complications down to try in futility to realign the cogs so to speak.

We then added screens, devices, and hyper-stimulation of our nervous system and this is where we are.

A hyper-stimulated, sleep-deprived population. More so, all of it is directly linked to, heart, mental, metabolic health and cancer risk.

Sticking plasters in the form of stimulants, depressants, sedatives and whatever other drug we can use to mask one of the many symptoms.

Short term, the effects of a disrupted sleep/wake cycle include:

❎ Leptin/Ghrelin Desynchrony

❎ Impaired Glucose Metabolism

❎ Dysregulated Cell Cycles (the complications out of sync)

❎ Melatonin Suppression

❎ Sleep Deficiency

❎ Altered Stressor Reactivity

❎ Desynchrony Of Our Hormonal Axis

❎ Inflammation

❎ An Imbalanced Nervous System

Just for context, all that takes is someone sleeping in and staying out late every weekend.

Chronically do that and it all gets significantly worse.

Let's look at one of those sticking plasters.

Ozempic, currently and widely being used as a weight loss drug, is an injection intended to manage blood glucose levels and HbA1c in people specifically with type 2 diabetes.

So what we can ascertain is that if we manage glucose and HbA1c better we manage appetite, metabolism and therefore weight gain better.

A disrupted sleep/wake cycle will impair glucose metabolism, and negatively influence appetite through the disruption of leptin and ghrelin and we know that poor sleep quality is directly correlated with elevated HbA1c.

Maybe people just need to manage their sleep and wake cycles better for optimal health and performance.