Differing paradecadal cycles, semidecadal/decadal amplitude ratios and vascular variability anomalies in the physiology of a physician-scientist Journal Article uri icon
Overview
abstract
  • Systolic (S) and diastolic (D) blood pressure (BP), pulse pressure (PP), heart rate (HR) and core temperature, self-measured 4-8 times per day for 16 years by a man undergoing hypotensive treatment (with current vascular variability anomalies, VVAs), undergo about 10-year cycles. The periods, τs, found have point estimates of 10.6, 12.8, 10.0, 13.7 and 9.2 years, respectively, that seem similar but have some non-overlapping CIs (95% confidence intervals). Some, but not all physiological decadal τs overlapped each other or those of paradecadal τs in the geomagnetic index aa, in Wolf numbers (WN) and in cosmic rays (CR). Congruences (overlapping CIs of τs), neither among all physiological variables nor between them, on the one hand, and the three (governmentally monitored) environmental cycles, on the other hand, are in keeping with a partial internal (within the organism) and partial external (between EH and his environment) paradecadal asynchronization, to be aligned with the usually dominant circadian synchronization with some differences in phases of most physiological variables. WN, aa and CR were analyzed during the span on the physiological data as a whole and again after decimation corresponding to interruptions in the physiological data (match), the latter to study any effect of gaps creating artifacts. The antipodal geomagnetic index aa exhibited a τ of 10.73 years in the series as a whole and in the decimated series. WN and CR from Rome, corrected for barometric pressure, had a τ of 11.2 and 11.0 years for all or matched data, respectively. Each of the paradecadal components was also accompanied by a parasemidecadal component, which in the case of SBP and temperature had a larger amplitude than that of the paradecadal cycle, yielding parasemidecadal/paradecadal amplitude ratios of 261% and 117% respectively, while these ratios were 73% for DBP, 60% for PP and 70% for HR. In the man examined, as in an earlier case, there may also be a selective partial internal decadal to semidecadal frequency multiplication complementing a selective assortment of paradecadal periods in keeping with a possible circadecadal internal and external partial asynchronization. (Evidence about prior synchronization with biospheric responses to the phase-shift of the environmental cycle, and many more observations with a subtraction-and/or-addition approach would be needed for describing the same data as a partial external and internal desynchronization, a term which implies an environmental synchronizer, whereas as yet we refer only to environmental influencers or, at best, to [transient] external drivers.) These findings, based on overlapping and non-overlapping CIs of τs from the Marquardt algorithm, await both better such intervals, accounting for non-stationarities in space and time and experiments by nature itself, by changing phase of a component and/or by omitting a frequency from its spectrum to allow the study of biospheric consequences by a remove-and-replace approach. The asynchronization is partial insofar as it relates only to a few organismic (2 out of 5 in the external case) and a few environmental variables. It seems to be physiological, since the subject is clinically healthy at 86 years of age (in 2012) at the time of this report, although he happens to have some VVAs in an ~7-day around-the-clock chronobiologically-interpreted record that should prompt further monitoring.

  • publication date
  • 2012
  • published in
    Research
    keywords
  • Chronobiology
  • Heart
  • Additional Document Info
    volume
  • 4
  • issue
  • 2-3