The human body is an amazing thing. The average person understands only a fraction of what his or her body is doing at any given moment. There are innumerable things that scientists are still trying to understand about the human body, especially the brain. However, there is one aspect of the human body that has been known for quite some time, but only to a select few people. That aspect is the body's biorhythms.

You've probably seen a graph of a sine or cosine wave at some point in your mathematical childhood, and that's exactly what biorhythms look like. The cycle begins on the zero line, or the "x-axis" if you will. This line is the point at which critical days occur, so whenever the cycle repeats, a critical day occurs on that cycle. After this critical point, the first half of the cycle begins, which is the upward part of the curve. All the days during this half of the cycle are high days, then the curve hits the axis again for another critical day. After that, the curve descends under the axis and you have your low days, the other half of the cycle. Then, it all starts over again with another critical day. Days where two cycles coincide for a critical day are called double-critical days, and about every 80 years, a triple-critical day, such as the day of your birth, occurs. On these days (your birth being the most obvious one because the cycles all begin on the axis) all three cycles are at a critical point. I'll explain more about what critical, high, and low days mean later on in the hub.

At this point I am assuming, of course, that you believe in biorhythms. If you are not among those who think biorhythms are proven, scientific cycles that your body goes through, I'll leave it to you to check your own biorhythms against days you felt strong or weak and see if they don't match up exactly. It shouldn't be hard to google up some random program that can compute your biorhythms for you. I will say that on every occasion that I have been really sick or felt really good, and checked my biorhythm on that day, the cycles have always matched up exactly with how I felt. My worst day ever of being sick was on a double-critical day, and some of the times when I have done the best at what I do have been on double-high or critical days. I think that we have two choices--we can either live in accordance with our body's natural cycles, and gain the benefits, or we can ignore them and suffer the consequences.

There are three cycles that begin at the moment of birth and determine the relative internal stress levels of a person's body on any given day. They are the physical, intellectual, and emotional cycles, and each is governed by the brain, which decides what hormones, and how much of each, to produce in order to regulate bodily functions. A great deal of how a person feels physically, intellectually, and emotionally, is due to these biorhythms.

The physical cycle, as you might imagine, has to do with the body itself--cell growth, body maintenance, sleeping, digesting--the works. This cycle is the shortest one at 23 days long. High days on this cycle will be characterized by a general feeling of health. The immune system will be more able to fight off diseases, the body will be stronger, and more able to repair itself and to grow. Low days will feel average, while aches and pains may come more often on critical days. Be careful on critical days in this cycle, as your body will be more susceptible to harm and can be damaged easier. Take it easy, and don't overexert yourself. Staying in tune with your physical cycle will help you feel healthier, and stay that way longer.

The intellectual cycle is all about your mind, and repeats every 33 days. Knowledge and learning will be more effective and take place more readily on high days. Days of sudden inspiration and amazing achievements are possible on critical days, though headaches and muddled thoughts are not uncommon on critical days. Low days allow your brain to cool off from the high cycle, so if you can, schedule vacations during low cycles and schedule tests, performances, and other stressful activities during high cycles when your brain will be able to handle it. On high days you will feel more focused and sharp-minded, and on low days it may be hard to think straight.

The emotional cycle is 29 days long, and not surprisingly, has to do with your moods. Mood swings will generally follow the cycle. You will have some of the best days of your life on high days, and on low days you might be more depressed and dejected. If you want to find some really interesting "coincidences" look up suicides or suicide attempts and the birthdays of the people who committed them, and I can almost guarantee that the person will have been on a critical emotional day, most likely a double-critical day. I find that the more research you do into these biorhythms, the more truth you will encounter.

It is interesting to note that for three out of four people, the 22nd birthday is a double-critical day. Out of myself, my brother, and my parents, only my Dad had a 22nd birthday that was not double-critical. (My brother and I both have yet to see our 22nd birthday, but I looked up our biorhythms on those days using Cosmi's Biorhythm Calculator software, and they both turned out to be double-critical days). It depends only on the number of days from birth to the 22nd birthday, and for most people, the cycles are physical high, and critical on the other two cycles. If your 22nd birthday turns out not to be double-critical, then you will find the double-critical day close by, usually the very next or previous day.

I hope my hub helped to inform you about biorhythms, and better understand just how amazing the body is. It regulates itself in ways we can't totally grasp, and all right under our own skin.