Temporal Alignment Rejuvenation Hypothesis

What is the temporal alignment rejuvenation hypothesis?

Temporal misalignment between genes, which must be co-expressed together, and genes that must never get co-expressed together, e.g. sleep and wakefulness genes, is getting gradually lost with advancing age. Generally during preschool age, it felt that there was almost no time gap between falling asleep in the evening and waking up refreshed the next morning. Ten hours of time seemed to pass by every night like an eye-blink.

Unfortunately, middle aged adults no longer feel this way. They are aware that their sleeping time is spread out over many hours. This is because their temporal alignment between their initially i.e. during early childhood still perfectly co-expressed sleeping and wakefulness, genes, which MUST never be co-expressed simultaneously with one another, because sleeping and wakefulness are mutually exclusive since they inhibit one another very profoundly, is getting gradually lost due to increased stress-levels during advancing age.

One can either sleep or be awake but not both simultaneously. Unfortunately, it is unhealthy to partially sleep while remaining partially awake at the same time. This prevents the biological processes and molecular functions, which require restful REM sleep, from rejuvenating older individuals. This is because not all wakefulness genes are turned off at night time anymore while not all sleeping genes are turned on together when they need to work together during sleep, like a single physiological functional unit, similar to all Gene Ontology (GO) Term member genes, in order to provide all the life-essential benefits of sleeping properly.

Similarly, during day time not all sleeping genes are turned off properly while – at the same time – not all wakefulness genes are turned on completely during daytime. This interferes with mental clarity, focus, concentration and results in forgetfulness. It has already been scientifically proven that the circadian rhythm is a very important marker of biological age and highly indicative of the remaining lifespan ahead. This applies uniformly for humans, animals, model organisms, such as mice, flies, worms, fish and even yeast.

The circadian rhythm is essential in balancing the need to perform well during the day while properly recovering during nights. If this is true, then aging related decline could be reversed simply by realigning the temporal regulation of gene expression pattern to what they were during the first years of elementary school.

Only after proper sleep, anyone can perform at his/her desired peak during daytime in researching, working discovering, studying, experimenting, writing, driving, biking, exercising, computing, etc.