Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Biorhythm

What is Biorhythm?

A biorhythm (from Greek βιορυθμός - biorhuthmos) is a hypothetical cycle in physiological, emotional, or intellectual well-being or prowess. "Bio" pertains to life and "rhythm" pertains to the flow with regular movement. Biorhythms theory has no more predictive power than chance, and has been labeled a pseudoscience by skeptics.

Biorhythm History

Biorhythms were discovered around the turn of the twentieth century. Dr. Wilhelm Fliess, an ear and throat specialist at the University of Berlin, was one of the early pioneers of the concept. He noticed patterns in his patient' symptoms and had a mathematician take a look at them. They found that the sickness cycle was different for men and women.

Another early biorhythms researcher was Dr. Hermanna Swoboda, a psychology professor at the University of Vienna. He found patterns in pain, swelling, fevers and heart attacks that were identical to those proposed by Fliess. He also found that the male cycle was related to certain traits associated with males, while the female cycle was related to certain traits associated with females

Although the traits associated with these two cycles were considered male and female, the researchers believed that both rhythms pertained to both sexes.

Dr. Friedrich Teltscher of the University of Innsbruck also studied biorhythms through experiments on 5,000 students. This led to the discovery of a new biorhythm: The intellectual cycle.

Dr. Hans Swing at the Swiss National Institute of Technology did a study of 700 accidents and 300 deaths in 1939 He determined that 401 of accidents and 197 of the deaths were related to unfavorable biorhythms.

Other studies include one involving the sanitation department of the city of Hanover. It was determined that 83% o the garbage and watering truck accidents in the city occurred on caution days. Yet another study, performed by Dr. Reinhold Bochow in Berlin, involved 499 agricultural accidents. He found that 62% of the accidents studied were related to biorhythms.

In addition to the physical, emotional, an intellectual cycles, several other biorhythm cycles have been proposed and even charted. But these original three are the only ones that have been subjected to intense scientific study, and therefore the only ones that have been proven valid.

There has been much debate over the years about the validity of biorhythms as a whole. While most scientist and medical professionals agree that man's physical and emotional states are always fluctuating, not all agree that they fluctuate in accordance with regular cycles that begin at birth.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

More about biorhythms: http://naturalbiorhythms.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

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