How Circadian Rhythm Is Linked To Bipolar Disorder?

Your endocrine, immune and nervous system difficulties work together to affect one of the less measurable causes of bipolar disorders.

Bipolar disorder is disturbances in body rhythms. Your nervous system with bipolar disorder frequently makes specific types of regulatory errors.

Many of them involve body’s internal clock, which controls the phenomena called as circadian rhythm.

Circadian rhythms are the regular rhythmic changes in waking and sleeping. The chemical clock that governs these rhythms is located in a part of the hypothalamus gland called the suprachiamatic nucleus.

It regulates the pineal gland’s secretion of the hormone melatonin. Hypothalamus is the link between nervous and endocrine systems.

Nervous system is associated with immune system and hypothalamus exerts it effect on the immune system. The combination of these systems can alter your body chemistry, contributing to shifts in body rhythms such as circadian, social and seasonal rhythms.

Circadian rhythm is a 24 hour cycle of the body. When circadian rhythm is upset, mood disturbances can result. In some people sleep deprivation causes mania and in some it can alleviate depression.

For maintaining mental health, regulation of circadian rhythm is important. If the system is not regulated, it can lead to stress.

Seasonal rhythms are similar but longer in duration. Seasonal rhythms are determined by the amount of day light experienced within a given season.

If seasonal rhythms are not regulated, it can lead to seasonal affective disorder (SAD). People affected with SAD feel depressed as the amount of light disappears during winter.

The depression continues until spring approaches and day lengthens. In the remaining seasons, these people do not experience mood disturbances. Both circadian rhythm and seasonal rhythm affects a person’s social rhythm.

Social rhythm means waking up at regular time, going to work and doing other house works. Person can experience mood changes when social rhythms are disturbed by insomnia, mood changes and work schedules.

If a person is affected with bipolar disorder, a change in body’s rhythm leads to stress.

When you consider the causes of bipolar disorders, you should remember the complex nature of mood polarity. People with bipolar disorder have more difficulty in regulating circadian rhythm system.

The rhythms are disordered, so sleep, waking and other patterns are disturbed. Circadian rhythm disturbance also results in mood swings, depression, mania or other abnormal states of mind.

As insomnia, excessive sleepiness, changes in eating habits, and higher or lower activity levels are set in, the clock gets harder to set in and person becomes more and more ill.

Bipolar disorders are caused by a complicated mix of inherited gene differences, differences in brain structure, unusual electric and magnetic activity in the brain and environmental factors. The problem originates from nervous, endocrine and immune system.

When hypothalamus becomes infected, it leads to deregulation of neurotransmitters, hormones and immune components. The resulting change is biochemical imbalance in brain or body and link to the cause that lead to bipolar illness.