Circadian Rhythm and the Physiology and Pathology of Eye

Abstract

With the proposing and popularizing of the concept of “ holistic integrative medicine,” people have moved their perspective from an isolated organ to the entire human body, and from the view of whole body further explore the relationship between human body and local organs at the level of internal body and analyze the interaction between the environment and the body at the level of external body, with the purpose of finding out the inner and close relationship from some of the past seemingly irrelevant things. “Circadian rhythm” is somehow strange for most ophthalmologists and far away from our usual study. But actually, “circadian rhythm” is the strongest rhythm system inside organisms, which can adjust the physiological rhythm and behavior according to the cycle of sun exposure. Light change is an important stimulus signal to the regulation of rhythm of the central. Eyes, which receive the light of outside world, without doubt, will have a complex relationship with circadian rhythm. In this section, we describe the basic concepts of biological rhythms, discuss the material basis and regulatory mechanisms of circadian rhythms with the most relevant to vision, and also introduce the interaction effect between circadian rhythm and physiology and pathology of the eye. It is expected that readers can understand the link between biological rhythm and ophthalmology after reading this chapter, and then deeply integrate the knowledge system related to biological rhythm and eye diseases by applying the concept of holistic integrative medicine, to better optimize the diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases.