This year, the award Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been awarded to Professors Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythms.

Circadian rhythms are those that last approximately 24 hours. It has long been known that organisms adapt their physiology and behavior to the time of day following a circadian patron saint . Thus, several physiological processes - such as sleep/wake cycles, secretion of hormones such as cortisol and melatonin, and metabolism - show rhythms controlled by the circadian biological clock.

The mammalian circadian system is composed of a series of Structures coordinated by a central pacemaker located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. This "central clock" synchronizes, in turn, the activity of other "peripheral clocks" located in other tissues - such as the heart, liver, pancreas or adipose tissue - by regulating the cyclic secretion of hormones and the activity of the vegetative nervous system. 

An important development in this regard has taken place in recent decades finding . It is the confirmation that circadian rhythms are regulated by the so-called "clock genes". These genes encode a series of proteins that regulate rhythms through positive (CLOCK and BMAL) and negative (PER and CRY) feedback loops.

These and other advances are part of Chronobiology: the science that studies the biological rhythms that take place in living beings. Chronobiology has a major impact on many aspects of our physiology. For example, circadian clocks, in addition to regulating sleep patterns, also influence eating behavior, blood pressure and body temperature, among others.

It follows that behaviors or habits that cause a relevant alteration of the physiological, biochemical and metabolic circadian rhythms can provoke what is called chronodisruption. Many programs of study -among them some that we have carried out in the research center in Nutrition of the University of Navarra- show a clear association between chronodisruption and the increase in the incidence of sleep disorders, cardiovascular diseases, cognitive deterioration, obesity and metabolic syndrome, accelerated aging and even some types of cancer.

Translated to our life patterns, what we already know about the relevance of circadian cycles confirms the importance of adopting healthy life patterns in accordance with natural synchronizers, such as the light-dark cycle. Or in other words: respect sleep hours and avoid exhibition to bright light at night, especially the blue part of the spectrum (cell phones, tablets, etc.), as they can suppress the nocturnal production of melatonin and disrupt sleep and circadian rhythms, thus leading to a chronodisruption of our biological rhythms.