For my entire adult life, I’ve always felt as if the output of my mind and body fluctuates every few days or weeks.
For example, one week I may wake up and exercise every single day. It’s not just that I’m able to maintain the motivation to workout each day, but it also feels easier to complete each workout. Then the next week, getting up to go to the gym is like asking me to saw off a limb. I just simply can’t do it.
Or another example is writing. I might go a week where it just feels like everything is aligning, as if the words are just pouring out of me onto the page. And then some weeks it feels like writing each word is like pulling a tooth (today is one of those days).
To put it simply - it’s as if I’m able to do more physically, mentally, or emotionally on certain days or weeks than I’m able to do during others.
I always assumed that this had strictly to do with motivation, a symptom of the brain’s inability to constantly work at full force. The body and mind need time to rest.
And I’m sure there’s a million and one factors that could affect how you perform physically, mentally, or emotionally. Sleep, diet, and stress are few that come to mind.
But then why does it always seem so unpredictable?
In the late 19th century, scientist Wilhelm Fliess developed biorhythm theory, the idea that people’s lives were significantly affected by rhythmic cycles: a 23-day physical cycle, a 28-day emotional cycle, and a 33-day intellectual cycle. The theory posits that these rhythms start at the time of birth and oscillate in a steady fashion (sine wave) due to hormonal secretion functions, and because of this predictable pattern, can be accurately calculated day to day.
The theory became popularized in the United States in the late 1970s following the release of a series of books on biorhythms by Bernard Gittelson. With renewed interest and popularity, the theory was then tested independently, but unfortunately, it was consistently found to be invalid.
So long story short, biorhythms aren’t real. It’s all just pseudoscience, or at least what Fliess proposed isn’t real.
When I first found out about biorhythms, I felt quite relieved. I finally had something that I could point to and say: THIS is what I’ve been experiencing all along. But when I researched them further and found out that it was all just pseudoscience, it was a bit of a let down.
But I still feel like there’s something there.
I’m sure there’s plenty of research on this that I haven’t stumbled across yet, and if nothing else, it makes me marvel at the countless mysteries of the brain and body. Maybe there aren’t definite 23-day, 28-day, and 33-day cycles, but there has to be some mechanism that creates these fluctuations.
What do you think?
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For my entire adult life, I’ve always felt as if the output of my mind and body fluctuates every few days or weeks.
For example, one week I may wake up and exercise every single day. It’s not just that I’m able to maintain the motivation to workout each day, but it also feels easier to complete each workout. Then the next week, getting up to go to the gym is like asking me to saw off a limb. I just simply can’t do it.
Or another example is writing. I might go a week where it just feels like everything is aligning, as if the words are just pouring out of me onto the page. And then some weeks it feels like writing each word is like pulling a tooth (today is one of those days).
To put it simply - it’s as if I’m able to do more physically, mentally, or emotionally on certain days or weeks than I’m able to do during others.
I always assumed that this had strictly to do with motivation, a symptom of the brain’s inability to constantly work at full force. The body and mind need time to rest.
And I’m sure there’s a million and one factors that could affect how you perform physically, mentally, or emotionally. Sleep, diet, and stress are few that come to mind.
But then why does it always seem so unpredictable?
In the late 19th century, scientist Wilhelm Fliess developed biorhythm theory, the idea that people’s lives were significantly affected by rhythmic cycles: a 23-day physical cycle, a 28-day emotional cycle, and a 33-day intellectual cycle. The theory posits that these rhythms start at the time of birth and oscillate in a steady fashion (sine wave) due to hormonal secretion functions, and because of this predictable pattern, can be accurately calculated day to day.
The theory became popularized in the United States in the late 1970s following the release of a series of books on biorhythms by Bernard Gittelson. With renewed interest and popularity, the theory was then tested independently, but unfortunately, it was consistently found to be invalid.
So long story short, biorhythms aren’t real. It’s all just pseudoscience, or at least what Fliess proposed isn’t real.
When I first found out about biorhythms, I felt quite relieved. I finally had something that I could point to and say: THIS is what I’ve been experiencing all along. But when I researched them further and found out that it was all just pseudoscience, it was a bit of a let down.
But I still feel like there’s something there.
I’m sure there’s plenty of research on this that I haven’t stumbled across yet, and if nothing else, it makes me marvel at the countless mysteries of the brain and body. Maybe there aren’t definite 23-day, 28-day, and 33-day cycles, but there has to be some mechanism that creates these fluctuations.
What do you think?
