MONAD Health Event Mode & Chronobiology.
Novalis (1772 – 1801) said that “every disease is a musical problem,” a malfunctioning of rhythm, resonance, vibration and harmonic tuning. Disease is what happens when the rhythms of your human body get out of tune with the rhythms of the world around you. The MONAD Calendar-Clock app features a Health Event Mode which encourages you to record and identify “health patterns” (various physiological and behavioral rhythms) that are contributing to dis-ease in your body and life. It will also (Coming Soon) make healthy suggestions that can help you improve the timing of events that have an impact on your health.
MONAD in Health Event Mode is based on the principles of Chronobiology, a field of biology that studies periodic (cyclic) phenomena in living organisms and their adaptation to solar- and lunar-related rhythms. Every cell of your body has a physiological calendar-clock inside it. The daily cycles of light and dark outside our bodies, marked by the rising and setting of the Sun, are marked internally by hormonal spikes and other physiological occurrences inside our bodies, the so called circadian rhythm. For instance, the peak secretion of serotonin (an important neurotransmitter) occurs at noon, when the Sun’s intensity is greatest. Conversely, the secretion of melatonin occurs primarily at night, to help you sleep. Astronomical events mesh with cellular, endogenous events through the epigenetic mechanism involving the “Clock genes” at a DNA level, or what I would suggest are actually Calendar-Clock genes.
The yearly cycle of the seasons is marked by various hormonal ebb and flow cycles that keep us in tune with and hopefully responsive to our constantly changing planetary environment. A woman’s menstrual cycle has always been linked to the timing of a lunar month. All of our circadian (biological) calendar-clocks do their best to keep time (in tune) with the complex celestial Calendar-Clock. Unfortunately, the technological conveniences of our modern society has resulted in many of us getting severely “out of tune” with our environment.
Some of us spend most of our days inside relatively gloomy interiors and our nights are lit up with artificial light. Working the “late shift” can turn everything up-side-down. In winter we artificially heat our homes and offices and in summer we use air conditioners to unnaturally cool the local environment. We eat indiscriminately throughout the day without giving our digestive system an opportunity to fully digest. We fly in jets back and forth across time zones and natural (nature) rhythms are severely disrupted, suppressed and forgotten. Forgotten, but not without a high cost.
There is still a great deal of resistance to the idea that we are electro-magnetic beings, sensitive to invisible and subtle electro-magnetic environmental stimuli and information. Artificial light can usefully banish the natural darkness of night, but it also contributes to the chaotic electro-magnetic fields surrounding all electro-magnetic appliances; these fields interpenetrate and influence our bodies at all times.
Our animal bodies are designed to thrive on balance, predictability and rhythm. Just as the light of day comes regularly after the dark of night, human activity needs to be followed by rest. Almost every hormone, neurotransmitter and digestive enzyme has a fairly regular period of peak activity followed by a period of time where the catalyst is broken down and other complementary hormones have their period of activity. Everything can’t be happening at one time.
One of the most important rhythms affecting your health is the rhythm of sleep and waking. Not just how much you sleep but the quality of your sleep and the timing of your sleep. Sleep in the middle of the night is more effective than sleep during the day. There are also the rhythms of when you eat, when you exercise and when you think. (On the MONAD app, these activities are organized in terms of the four elements and color-coded, so that all four elemental activities can be usefully shown on the same screen at the same time. Sleep is green; EARTH. Eat is blue; WATER. Move (exercise) is purple; AIR. And Think is red; FIRE.)
Sleep & Eat are associated with parasympathetic activities; Move & Think are associated with sympathetic activities. As such, the organization of color-coded Health Event Wedges placed around the number dial, based on the rhythmic re-occurrence of various Health Events, describes various biorhythms. Your personal, animal biorhythms can be usefully (and easily) recorded and displayed in the context of planetary biorhythms (the solar day, lunar month and seasonal year). This parallel display of personal and planetary events allows you to align your personal life with the life of the planet, which is important if you want to achieve real, long-lasting health.
One of our programming goals is to turn MONAD Health Event Mode into an essential tool for studying chronobiological processes and their various dietary, exercise and medical interventions. MONAD is also designed to meet the needs of alternative health practitioners; even untrained individuals will benefit simply by keeping a “Chronobiological Health Journal.” (By the way, not all of the following features are active yet. All of the new features Stage 3 programming will add or complete are described here: Health Event Mode.)
How to Record a Chronobiological Health Journal.
Start by recording when you go to sleep and when you wake up. When you’re ready, simply tap the “Sleep” button followed by the [+] button, and “Save,” then go to sleep. When you wake up, tap the [Stop] button followed by [Save] and the sleep event is recorded. (You can easily adjust the Start or End times if you had a hard time falling asleep. And if you wear an iWatch, this information is automatically recorded and imported into MONAD, which then automatically creates a Sleep Wedge.) A Sleep Wedge is required for marking your “personal noon,” which is the midpoint of your “personal day.”
We all share the same planetary day and the same planetary noon, which is the midpoint of the daylight period. In contrast, your personal day starts when you go to sleep, and ends when you go to sleep the next night. Your personal day is not necessarily 24 hours long. Your personal noon (marked with a red triangle, 180º opposite the midpoint of your sleep wedge) depends on when you go to sleep and when you wake up. Harmonic tuning, as it relates to health, involves the alignment of your personal day and personal noon with the planetary day and planetary noon. This is a measure of Chronotype; whether you’re an “early bird” or a “night owl.”
Throughout your personal day (your waking period) you can easily record other health events. After sleep, the next most important may be when you eat. When you’re ready to eat, simply tap the “Eat” button, select the particular meal from the sub-category menu, followed by tapping the [+] button and “Save.” Then when you’re done eating, tap the [Stop] button and the meal is recorded. (You may want to add notes about what you ate and how much and where and all of that. Or you can take a picture of your meal that is then linked to this event.) Just remember, when you eat is as important as what you eat. If you faithfully record all of your meals and snacks throughout the day, the pattern of your digestive activities will be clear. Same with exercise and thinking.
Eating triggers the para-sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Sleeping is also a parasympathetic activity. Exercise and thinking are sympathetic activities. There should be a natural regularity and rhythm of parasympathetic activity followed by sympathetic activity, off and on over the course of a day. The awake period (personal daylight period) should have 2 – 4 distinct alternations of autonomic activity. If you eat continuously throughout the day, without giving your digestive system a chance to fully digest and rest, this alternating pattern is disrupted, and so is your health.
With regular, episodic eating habits this parasympathetic–sympathetic alternation occurs fairly regularly. But you also have to understand that sympathetic activity can override parasympathetic activity at any time, temporarily shutting down digestion and also making it hard to sleep. It’s called the sympathetic response or the fight-or-flight reaction. Constant sympathetic stress will disrupt the flow of rest – activity (the autonomic “swara” cycle) as profoundly as constant eating.
Women will find the menstrual tracker especially useful. When your menstrual cycle starts, simply tap on the Moon and then tap the [+] button, followed by “Save.” The Moon will start to glow and slowly pulse and will continue to do so until you tap [Stop] at the end of your cycle. Over the course of this menstrual period, the lunar pathway traversed by the Moon (the Moon advances approximately 12º per day) will change colors, turning from blue to purple. Double tap the Moon at any time in order to bring up a year-long comparison of your menstrual cycles in the event window.
The rhythmic shape of your life will be revealed to you if you just accumulate enough data (health events) so that you can scan back through a series of your health “day-charts.” Suggested (translucent) Event Wedges will encourage you to improve the timing of heath events so critical to your health and well-being. Suggested Event Pages will make recommendations for improving the content of various events. Experiment with trying to align your personal and planetary noon. Experiment and find out what rhythm makes you feel better, healthier. Know that the rhythmic timing of your activities is just as important as the content of your activities.
Planetary Health & The Biosphere.
And once you begin to appreciate the importance of your personal rhythms when it comes to health, you will also start to recognize the importance of becoming aware of and even celebrating those environmental, agricultural rhythms we all share. The solar day, lunar month and seasonal year are planetary, photosynthetic biorhythms, involving the distribution of heat and light from the Sun, all around the globe, to a predominantly plant-based biosphere. (80% of the biomass of the biosphere organisms is made up of plants.)
Festivals are how we celebrate and acknowledge our connection to and dependence on our plant partners and the celestial photosynthetic Being that is our living solar system. Planetary health should be a subject as important to you as personal health; they go hand in hand. Earth is the heart planet of a living solar system, actually the heart and lungs and digestive system of the solar system which is a living, photosynthetic being. Monad.Earth presents the radical new science behind the MONAD app, involving the complementary nature of plants and animals. It involves monads and chakras but it’s all based on modern science, although it also invokes the ancient wholism and respect for nature that we all shared before the scientific revolution and Copernicus.
Plants grow within the framework of the four seasons of a seasonal year. The four corners of a seasonal year (spring equinox, summer solstice, fall equinox and winter solstice) should be celebrated all around the globe. Four global parties per year; is that not a great idea? The state of the garden (biosphere) is thoroughly considered on these occasions and gratitude is expressed for our partners in life, the plants and the living, photosynthetic solar system as a whole.
Recommended Websites:
Chronobiology.com describes how “a young science from Europe called Chronobiology has been gaining importance over the past 30 years. Chronobiology refers to the day-night cycle that affects the human organism when the earth rotates. Since the beginning of mankind, human history has been shaped by light and darkness. Genetically manifested timers reside deep in our bodies that control this fundamental rhythm. The more intelligently we absorb their information, the more useful it is. This connection is important in the prevention and treatment of diseases, as well as for the healing process.”
Chronobiology has made significant contributions to the development of medicine in recent years. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young for discovering the molecular basis of the circadian (solar day) rhythm. This website, chronobiologyinmedicine.org, has many outstanding articles about chronobiology in medicine.
It’s always a good idea to go directly to the source. Franz Halberg is the father of modern chronobiology. The HalbergChronobiologyCenter contains a wealth of information about all aspects of chronobiology.