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LETTER TO THE EDITOR |
Halberg Chronobiology Center University of Minnesota at Minneapolis
Address correspondence to Franz Halberg, Halberg Chronobiology Center, University of Minnesota, MMC 8609, 420 Delaware St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: halbe001{at}umn.edu; URL: http://www.msi.umn.edu/
halberg/
To the Editor:
We indicate a centuries-overdue, great need for reference values concerning the characteristics of cyclicities—some with very long periods—that governmental institutions will have to obtain, maintain, and extend in scope, when already ongoing, and should start as the new systematic physiological monitoring of special human and other "test pilots" whenever possible for a lifetime.
The need for reference values of decades-long cycles that thus far only a few investigators have collected (1–3) is illustrated in this Journal (4), where a figure shows a decline over several years in the excretion by a healthy man (C.H.) of hormonal metabolites (17-ketosteroids, 17-KS), which may have prompted male hormone replacement therapy (HRT) but was part of a physiological cycle. A special monograph appeared in the 1960s as a supplement to the Acta Endocrinologica describing methodological and other details (3).
A few years ago, we republished the data, in conjunction with another figure, reporting the time course of the same variable in the same person during the ensuing years (4). We dealt with one of many circadecadal cycles, known as confounders in economics (5) but not yet in biomedicine and certainly not yet as new invaluable end-points of aging in their own right. When unevaluated, these and other cyclicities (3) can be a terrible source of confusion. One figure of daily data covering 5 years could lead to unjustified HRT based on a decrease with age for years versus another author's claim of an increase with age for years in the same decade of life or so. Calling attention to this source of confounding, we also presented the spectrum of 17-KS excretion as we saw it 2 years ago (4).
In the interim, we learned with some delay that the solar winds' changes in speed, recorded from satellites, have an approximately 1.3-year component (6), which on follow-up was reported as an 1.3-year component alternating with an 1.6-year cycle, with each about 10.5-yearly polarity change of sunspots (7). It seemed likely that this component may be reflected in human physiology as well (8). An 1.3-year spectral component in biology is in keeping with our postulate made some years earlier of a quasi-reciprocity of physical environmental and biological cycles found as near-matches of spectral components in and around us (8). Moreover, C.H.'s 17-KS revealed both about 1.3- and 1.6-year components, analyzed with the uncertainties of all parameters, including those of periods, to ascertain, as was the case, that they all differed with statistical significance from precisely 1 year (Figure 1).
The inference that we are dealing with transyears (beyond 1 calendar year's length), e.g., with a biological 1.3 year and an 1.6 year, sometimes concurrently, was drawn from the technical finding that, for the excretion of steroidal metabolites (17-KS) of C.H., the 95% confidence intervals of all transyear components did not overlap the precise 1-year or 2-year trial periods: they were all in between. [By contrast, such an overlap was found for urine volume, in which the very steroids were determined.] We concluded, on this basis and other evidence, as we did half a century ago for circadians (9), that a longer-than-about-yearly (transyearly) periodicity could be built into us (10,11). The behavior of biological transyears was at variance with the behavior of the sunspot cycle during the same span, used as a proxy for solar wind behavior. Solar wind speed measurements were as yet unavailable at that time of the 17-KS data collection, before satellites could measure it.
Another set of documented findings on another colleague (R.B.S.), who has gathered information from 2 to 7 times a day on over 11 variables for up to 38 years, is that there can be a 1-year synchronized systolic and diastolic blood pressure and an asynchronized transyearly heart rate behavior in the same person (in different variables of the same circulation) (8). The (by the naked eye usually unseen) "transyears" can now be defined as spectral components in their own right in time series with a 95% confidence interval between 1 and 2 years overlapping neither of these lengths nor one another. This was the case in each of 44 series covering 5 to 38 years.
In a colleague who automatically measured his blood pressure and heart rate every 30 minutes for 6 years, the year and the transyear beat, amplifying each other when in phase and canceling each other when out of phase (10,11), a phenomenon that requires longitudinal measurements on the same person and that cannot be detected by the usual cross-sectional approach.
In addition to the 1.3-year and about-decadal periods, there is a whole spectrum of cyclicities that should be assessed when male HRT or any other problem in aging and beyond in any long-term endeavor is considered from a practical viewpoint. Otherwise, as Michael Fossel, editor of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine, put it, we "fly blind" (12). {Editor's Note by Fossel M, p. 239 (12): Talking about "blood pressure" as a single figure is similar to knowing the average height of a mountain range: an interesting statistic, but completely useless to a pilot trying to make it through a mountain pass alive. Realistically, we need to consider not merely the mean [average] stress on an aging vascular endothelial cell, but the "peaks" that it has to "fly over" as well. Aging vessels are—to an extent—the end result of such stresses. Halberg et al. suggest that many patients may be apparently normotensive [with normal blood pressure], yet (because of circadian peaks in blood pressure) have the catastrophic risks of any other severely hypertensive patient. They recommend that [medical practitioners] avoid "flying blind" and begin to measure peak pressures more accurately if we are to avoid disaster.} While not every person's daily excretion of steroids can be measured for nearly a decade and a half, as was possible for C.H., it may be a governmental responsibility to purchase all of the reagents beforehand to keep certain methods the same, as C.H. did, and to do this for many important variables. For some vital signs, ambulatory monitoring instrumentation is available and has proved to be useful (2,13).
Summary
It is important to make longitudinal cycles generally known and to advise everyone that the information may not be obtained from transverse studies, when subjects are not synchronized and when components vary as a function of age (14) and are beating (10,11). The contributions of a few test pilots who did and still do lifetime monitoring have paid off. But there is a need for a systematic government-supported endeavor, the same way as physicists did and do their monitoring on earth and now from satellites without applications for grants. Physiological monitoring should become a continuing routine of use in the ubiquitous transdisciplinary fields to which about-decadal as well as circadian cycles apply. We welcome physicists (15) who explain their field to biologists, and vice versa, we should follow their example (8).
By matching the systematic environmental monitoring, it is now time for biomedicine as a whole to provide systematically transdisciplinary evidence, in the tradition of William Gilbert (16).
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Earl E. Bakken is President of the North Hawaii Community Hospital, Inc., Kamuela, Hawaii.
References
10.5- and 21-year biological and physical cycles, magnetic storms and myocardial infarctions. Neuroendocrinol Lett. 2000;21:233-258.
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