|
 Man, like many species of living beings on Earth, in the process of evolutionary development, created his own internal environment (homeostasis) and thereby acquired relative independence from the external environment.
The constancy of the internal environment increased the adaptive reserves of the organism and, to some extent, freed it from the influence of physical and chemical factors of the surrounding nature.
In modern society, a person increasingly uses the benefits of civilization, which provides him with a comfortable temperature, relieves him of hard physical labor, and so on.
The constancy of the forces of gravity, small fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and the usual rhythm of changing natural phenomena are taken for granted: if there is a day, then there will be night, there is winter, then there is summer ahead, etc. The entire organic world of the planet is adapted to all this. The change of seasons of the year is also quite adequate for our body, which is so adapted to this rhythm that a healthy person does not experience disturbances in well-being on the eve of the next seasonal metamorphosis of nature. It would seem that the surrounding physical world does not have such essential significance for our existence.
But this is only at first glance. This is what biologists write about this: "The fundamental facts of biology indicate that the external environment is not a background against which the drama of life is played out, but a necessary component of the organism." At the International Symposium in Moscow "Space and the Evolution of the Organic World" convincing scientific data were presented confirming the participation of cosmic factors in evolutionary development.
At the present time, solar activity, magnetic and electric fields, radio waves, ionizing radiation, as well as the Earth's gravitational field have come to be referred to the range of environmental factors of living organisms.
The works of our famous scientist A.L. Chizhevsky made a significant contribution to the development of ideas about the influence of cosmic factors on life in the Earth's biosphere. The author found that the rate of reproduction of organisms depends on the period of solar activity. He found a close relationship between total mortality on Earth and the activity of the sun. We can see conjectures about such dependence in ancient science - "astrological medicine".
 A. L. Chizhevsky wrote in this regard: “... This influence - influencing, as the Romans said, determines the state of the organism both during health and illness. And in modern influencing, an echo of the magical connection between natural phenomena and the human body is heard. "
Observations of cereal crops, which cover centennial observations and indicate an increase in yield during periods of high solar activity, may also be of considerable interest.
The close relationship of flora and fauna with the movement of the planet and solar activity is most clearly manifested in the daily rhythm of functions. The rotation of the Earth on its axis creates a repeating rhythm of light, temperature, barometric pressure, cosmic radiation, gravity, and so on.
The amazing thing is that all life on planet Earth also has its own daily biological rhythm ("biological clock"). Today, more than 100 separate functions in the human body and living beings are known, which have a rhythmic, undulating character of changes during the day. Fluctuations occur from the "minimum" values to the "maximum", the interval between two tops of the maximum level is called a cycle. The internal biological daily rhythms of all living organisms are called circadian (lat. "Circus" - about).They do not completely coincide with the days.
There are a large number of rhythms that are completely dependent on changes in the environment (exogenous rhythms), while endogenous rhythms "work" in the body autonomously. These include the rhythms of heartbeats, breathing, bronchial patency (bronchial tone), blood pressure, and so on. Researchers believe that the biological rhythm in living nature arose during evolutionary development under the influence of the environment. Here you can recall the statement of Leonardo da Vinci, who, characterizing the place of man in nature, wrote: "Man is a model of the world."
Endogenous rhythms function in humans and animals, regardless of the rhythms of the external environment. Nevertheless, factors such as light and heliophysical phenomena act as synchronizers of these processes. When the coordination of the endogenous daily rhythm with the rhythm of the external environment is disrupted - the circumstances that are observed in pilots, astronauts, people traveling in a latitudinal direction, in working night shifts - painful syndromes arise. Insomnia is observed, working capacity sharply decreases, etc.
The discovery of the daily rhythm of physiological processes in the human body was an important event for the clinic. According to R.M. Zaslavskaya, more dangerous changes in the hemocoagulation system, blood electrolytes and cardiovascular crises are observed at certain times of the day (mainly at night). These data allowed the author to recommend scientifically grounded treatment tactics for patients with heart diseases, taking into account the daily rhythm of physiological functions.
So, for example, the most pronounced changes in the blood coagulation system in the form of an increase in its thrombotic potential in patients with myocardial infarction were found in the evening and early night hours. In order to eliminate these dangerous shifts in the "fluidity" of blood, it turned out to be advisable to use anticoagulants (blood thinners) of direct action (heparin, etc.), which can eliminate these violations when used repeatedly during the day under the control of laboratory parameters. At the same time, drugs such as phenylin (indirect anticoagulants) in these situations turned out to be ineffective (they are difficult to dose without taking into account the daily fluctuations in blood coagulation).
 In the acute period of myocardial infarction, sudden rhythm disturbances often occur, which, without vigorous and timely therapy, can be fatal for the patient. As R.M. Zaslavskaya and other authors have shown, electrolyte disturbances underlie these rhythm disturbances. It turned out, for example, that potassium deficiency reaches its culmination in the body of a patient with myocardial infarction by 2 am. That is why patients with myocardial infarction should take potassium preparations not during the day, but at night, this helps to prevent dangerous rhythm disturbances in myocardial infarction.
We can say that many physiological functions of humans and animals are "calibrated" to the movement of our planet around its axis. In modern science, the ideas of a close interconnection of cosmic factors of the external environment with the human body are increasingly being approved. AL Chizhevsky himself expressed this idea most figuratively: "Not the Earth, but outer space is becoming our homeland."
Clinical and experimental data show the unequal sensitivity of humans and animals to drugs at different times of the day. So, for example, the introduction of a poison (endotoxin) into the body of an animal at the end of the resting phase causes death in 80%, and when the same dose is administered in the middle of the activity phase of the circadian rhythm - less than 20%. In humans, the effect of pain relief from the administration of drugs (threshold of sensitivity) varies significantly during the day.
In foreign literature, much attention is paid to the calculation of the individual biorhythm to determine the predictions of a person's physical and intellectual working capacity.These calculations are based on the theory of G. Svoboda and V. Fleis, according to which the life of every person from the day of birth proceeds in accordance with three cycles (physical, intellectual, emotional) of a certain duration. And although the predictions of these calculations are very dubious, some foreign firms, in particular Japan, have released "astrological watches" to determine the individual biorhythm. Such "hasty" steps are dictated to a greater extent by the interests of business than by deep scientific knowledge. However, further development and integration of basic sciences can help deepen our understanding of this issue. Probably, in the future we will be able to answer the question once posed by the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: "Know what rhythm man possesses."
Continuing the discussion of the problem of the influence of cosmic factors on the human body, one cannot but say about the nature of the most essential of them - gravity.
The force of gravity is to this day the most mysterious of all the forces of nature. Attempts to isolate substrates, or material particles - "gravitons" and "anti-gravitons" for its explanation were in vain.
Gravity (from the Latin word - gravitas) means "heaviness". The following is known about gravitational forces: they impart the acceleration of gravity to all bodies. In the absence of air resistance, all bodies fall to the Earth, accelerating at the same rate (exactly the same). Gravitational forces are transmitted through absolutely any body, for them there are no barriers. Information about gravity was obtained from experimental research, which was initiated by Galileo, studying the speed of falling of various balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Conjectures about the existence of such forces were known not only to experimenters. This is what Lucretius Kar wrote in his poem "On the Nature of God" (1st century BC): "Therefore, everything, sweeping through the void without obstacles, should have equal speed, despite the difference in weight."
The law of universal gravitation, which characterizes the properties of these forces, was discovered by Isaac Newton (1656).
Newton's law says: two bodies act on each other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Gravitational forces reach enormous values when bodies with large masses interact (stars, Moon, planets, Earth).
The force of gravity should decrease as the object moves away from the center of the Earth. Here is an example from Ya. I. Perelman's book "Entertaining Physics", "If we lifted a kilogram weight to an altitude of 6400 km, that is, removed it from the center of the globe by 2 of its radius, then the force of attraction would weaken 22 times, that is, 4 times, and a weight on a spring balance wheel would "weigh" only 250 g instead of 1000 ".
On the earth's surface, all objects have their own weight, due to the gravitational field and the fulcrum. In the absence of a fulcrum (during the fall to the Earth), even the heaviest body becomes weightless during the entire period when it falls. A person can experience a state close to weightlessness in a high-speed elevator, when the floor begins to fall under his feet and in the first seconds the body is in a state of falling, as it were. Similar sensations can occur during the landing of an aircraft.
The uneven relief, the presence of mountains, ditches, some "flattening" of our planet from the poles, the bulge of the oceans as a result of the attraction of the Sun allow us to speak about the unequal distance of different parts of the Earth to its center. That is why there is a certain difference in the influence of gravitational forces on certain bodies and objects on its surface. So, for example, the force of gravity on the earth's surface varies from the equator to the poles and increases at the pole by about 0.5%. According to some reports, the force of gravity varies in different regions of the Earth within 5%.
As already noted, planetary gravity on Earth is ambiguous. It also depends on the geological masses that lie in its depths.In this regard, the calculated value of the earth's gravity may differ from that of the gravimeter. The difference between these two values is commonly called gravity anomalies.
A positive value for the gravity anomaly was found in Hawaii, a negative sign was recorded in Puerto Rico.
VI Slutskiy and co-authors drew the attention of researchers to the "plateau" with increased gravity on the territory of Azerbaijan. This was the reason for the authors to study the relationship between human diseases and gravity anomalies.
Gavrilova N.V.
|
