BIORHYTHMS. - By b. are meant the rhythmic activities of living beings. In reality every vital phenomenon is rhythmic: the life itself of a species, with the birth, growth and death of successive generations of individuals, is rhythmic; a rhythm is recognizable in almost all organic functions: respiration, circulation, secretory and excretory phenomena, etc. Thus many activities of living beings are rhythmic: waking and sleep, feeding, reproduction, etc. The activity of the individual cells that make up organisms is also rhythmic.
Biological cycles fall within b., although they are considered separately, representing a more or less complex series of phenomena tied to living beings, by which one returns from one condition to the same one. Thus the cycle of life from egg to egg, the cycle of organization of the elements that make up living matter, such as carbon and nitrogen, the life cycle of parasites, etc. (v. CICLI BIOLOGICI).
The rhythmicity of vital phenomena must be sought in the rhythmicity of celestial phenomena, such as essentially the rotation of the earth around the sun and around its axis and the rotation of the moon, and in the phenomena of the physical world in which plants and animals live, such as night and day, the seasons, the tides, the winds, etc.
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Alberto Stefanelli