Our body has its minimum and maximum activity within 24 hours: we must therefore try to support the biological rhythm by eating, training and sleeping at the right time. Only in this way does everything work best: following the right rhythm of the body, in fact, helps not to gain weight, to train the muscles more efficiently, to be really concentrated when we have to study or work.
«We have a main biological clock that acts as an orchestra conductor for all the functions of the organism: it is located in the hypothalamus (an area of the brain) and is mainly regulated by the light-dark rhythm. Alongside this, each organ and each apparatus has its own cycle of activity and rest to be respected in order to stay healthy “, explains Roberto Manfredini, chronobiologist at the University of Ferrara and author of A time for everything (Mondadori Piemme, 2019). “If we turn off the main clock by swapping day for night, all systems go haywire, but even when the secondary clocks change pace we run into trouble, because it’s as if one of the orchestra’s instruments is out of tune.”
7 am: awakening and … sex. The ideal day begins with physical exercise because, as Manfredini explains, «moving before breakfast helps to burn fat better and more. In this way you arrive hungry for breakfast, which is the main meal of the day, useful for providing fuel to the body in the morning, when it is needed most. Furthermore, waking up is also the best time for sex, because testosterone and other hormones rise, desire increases and sexual activity improves ».
And again: after breakfast, gastrointestinal movements resume, which are almost zeroed at night, and it is the right time to go to the bathroom (those suffering from a slight constipation should always take a bathroom break before leaving the house). When the body is “right”, it is time for the brain.
9 am: study and work. “Between 9 and 11 in the morning short-term memory, attention, accuracy, precision of gestures are at their best: it is the favorable time for learning and for working at maximum concentration,” he says. the chronobiologist. «After lunch, however, a” down “phase inevitably arrives. The organism, in fact, goes on pause, and should be indulged with a nap (no longer than 30 minutes). This “stop”, among other things, also occurs if you skip lunch or eat little, but the activity resumes around 15-16, when there is a peak in long-term memory capacity, and is therefore a good time to organize work, settle and retain information, study ».
6 pm: sports! In the late afternoon you can go back to the gym: coordination, cardiovascular function and muscles are in fact at their maximum, and body temperature also rises (indicative of internal metabolism), which reaches its peak around 18-19. With the body-machine at full speed, optimal performance in endurance sports such as running, swimming and cycling arrives in the evening. The moment, however, must be seized at the right time, because training too late can interfere with the mechanisms that then lead us to sleep. The main one is the secretion of melatonin, or the rest hormone, which begins around 9 pm.
10pm: Goodnight. At this time the body begins to turn off slowly and it is good to go along with it, because «activating the machine when it should be off means upsetting delicate balances. Snacks at night, staying awake until late at night, or exposing yourself to artificial light at night disrupts the cycles, and forces the organism to unnatural, out of sync activities, which favor the appearance of many diseases. For example, at night the body temperature is at its lowest because all the functions are calibrated for low consumption. The digestive system is not ready to receive food, the liver cannot handle fats well. “In fact, if we eat something sweet, the blood sugar rises more and in the long run all this leads to gaining weight and developing metabolic syndrome or diabetes more easily”, concludes Manfredini.