Daily routine can ward off mental illness

A structured schedule with established meal times and - importantly - early bedtime could improve quality of life and could even help head off mental illness, according to researchers at Douglas Mental Health University Institute.

It's about more than obeying the circadian clock - the internal 24-hour timer that controls our sleep-wake cycle - for the new study cites evidence that daily activity is governed by four-hour ultradian rhythms.

This could explain why we eat three evenly spaced meals per day across many cultures, according to the researchers, whose study could be critical to understanding mental health.

Ultradian rhythms are activated by dopamine, a feel-good hormone of which an imbalance is associated with individuals suffering from bipolar disease, whose ultradian rhythms are often stretched from four to 48 hours.

Infants who have not yet developed enough to sleep through the night provide the clearest evidence of the existence of ultradian rhythms, however, the current study was conducted on genetically modified mice.

Irregular sleep, known to be a byproduct of circadian rhythm disruption, is actually the result of ultradian rhythms thrown off-kilter.

A control centre in the body that doles out dopamine on a regular four-hour basis slackens and the hormone only gets generated every 48 hours.

The research team says this could explain why mental health problems such as mania and depression run on a 48-hour cycle.

The findings of the study, published in the online journal eLife, could have implications for mental well being.

While ultradian rhythms are not a new discovery, they seldom make headlines, though that may change as science takes an interest in life rhythms and their relationship with our happiness.

In December, researchers at Binghampton University in the US found that students who kept regular, early bedtimes had fewer negative thoughts than their counterparts who often spent nights partying or cramming for exams into the wee hours.

The team's findings revealed a link between repetitive negative thinking and sleep disruption: those who stayed up too late often had to wake up early and thus not sleep enough.

"If further findings support the relation between sleep timing and repetitive negative thinking, this could one day lead to a new venue for treatment of individuals with internalising disorders," said study co-author Meredith Coles.