Chronotherapy
Treatments

Basic principles

Biological rhythmss: Respecting the body’s natural cycles improves the effectiveness of treatments.
Synchronization with the biological clock: The time of day you take a medication or undergo therapy matters as much as the dosage.
Personalization: Each person has a different chronotype (morning or night), which can influence how they respond to chronotherapy.

Chronotherapy is a therapeutic strategy that takes advantage of the body’s biological rhythms to improve the effectiveness of medical treatments. It is based on chronobiology, which studies circadian rhythms (cycles of approximately 24 hours that regulate functions such as sleep, hormone secretion, body temperature and metabolism).

Types and applications of Chronotherapy

• Chronotherapy in the Treatment of Insomnia and Sleep Disorders:
  Sleep and light exposure schedules are adjusted to reprogram the circadian rhythm in cases of insomnia, shift work sleep disorder, or delayed sleep phase syndrome.
• Chronotherapy in Medication Administration:
  The effectiveness and toxicity of drugs may depend on the time of day they are taken.
  Examples:
  – Medication for hypertension (it is recommended to take it at night in some cases to reduce cardiovascular risk in the early morning).
  – Arthritis drugs (taken before dawn to relieve morning symptoms).
  – Chemotherapy: It is administered at times when cancer cells are most vulnerable and healthy cells are most resistant.
• Chronotherapy in Mental Health:
  It can be applied to treat treatment-resistant depression by adjusting light exposure, sleep deprivation, and medication administration according to the circadian rhythm.
• Chronotherapy in Nutrition and Metabolism:
  Eating at certain times influences the metabolism. It has been seen that eating late at night promotes weight gain and metabolic imbalance.