Be Well: The Chinese Medicine Body Clock

It’s rare for me to jolt out of bed after the first alarm (I live for the nights, people!), so when I found myself stirring awake at the same time, night after night—down to the minute—I determined that this was a job for Google.

Little did I know that this nightly interruption would actually be a job for Chinese medicine.

My search queries would go on to unleash a collection of articles all pointing to a common theme: the Chinese Medicine body clock. While buzzwords like “circadian rhythm” and “sleep hygiene” have been trending in the wellness space for some time, this 2,500-year-old school of thought takes things a step further and examines the functionality of our internal organs during our sleep-wake cycle. That’s right—our organs aren’t set to some automatic switch; your kidneys need time for self-care, too.

“Within our 24-hour clock, Chinese medicine assigns organ systems to different time segments,” explains Jessica Maynard, a licensed acupuncturist at Northwestern Health Sciences University’s Bloomington Clinic. “There are 12 different organs in the meridian system in the body.”

Read the full article from Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s Be Well online.