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Paying attention to your ultradian cycle boosts your energy levels.

By on March 7, 2023

You may have heard about circadian rhythms, the sleep/wake cycles that occur every 24 hours.

They’re important to your body’s energy use, but there’s another type of rhythm — ultradian — that has an even bigger impact on energy generation. “Ultradian” refers to any cycle that repeats itself a number of times within the 24-hour period.

Every body system, including heart rate, body temperature, digestion, memory and muscle strength, is governed by its own ultradian cycle and associated peaks and troughs. You experience the high points of ultradian cycles as bursts or flows of physical energy, alertness and creativity. You experience the low points as periods of fatigue, distraction and diminished capacity.

“Most people don’t know they have a natural 90- to 120-minute period of energy,” explains psychobiology researcher and therapist Ernest Rossi, PhD, who explored the influence of ultradian rhythms in his book The 20 Minute Break.

“Research indicates that all our major mind-body systems of self-regulation, including the autonomic nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system, have rest-activity cycles.”

After 90 to 120 minutes of peak activity, he explains, the human system goes into an energy dip for approximately 20 minutes, during which you may feel physically fatigued, mentally unfocused, hungry or grumpy. It’s during these dips, says Rossi, that each of the body’s systems replenishes its energy supply at the cellular level.

During an active phase, a cell extracts energy from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), changing it to adenosine diphosphate (ADP). During rest, the cell uses oxygen and blood glucose to change the ADP back to ATP.

Continuously ignoring the rest cycle over time leads to the classic symptoms of stress. In the short term, those might include headaches, skin problems, digestive difficulties and irritability. Down the road you may be looking at bigger problems like heart disease and depression. Ignoring your energy cycles is like swimming against the current: You end up with only exhaustion to show for your efforts.

To replenish your energy throughout the day, you need to work with your ultradian cycles, not against them. That means avoiding uninterrupted hours of steady-state activity, whether that’s desk work, hard labor or wall-to-wall meetings. That also means following your body’s natural work and rest cycles to reduce fatigue and boost energy. Ideally, says Rossi, after a period of activity, you should give yourself 20 minutes of complete relaxation.

Best-case scenario: You would lie down, breathe deeply, tune inward and just let your mind wander. But even if you can’t get horizontal and totally check out, you can (and should) find other ways of giving your energy system a rest, even if it’s for 10 minutes, and not the full 20.

“We need these brief periods of rest while every cell of our body makes ATP,” says Rossi. When the body is allowed a break after intense activity, he says, it can “replenish the energy stores in the pituitary and hypothalamus, the adrenal glands, and the endocrine system, so that we can once again perform at our best during the active phase.” Once you’ve had your ATP boost, you can go back to what you were doing, feeling refreshed and productive.

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If total rest isn’t possible, take any break you can: Switch activities and downshift to a lower gear, for as close to 20 minutes as you can, given the constraints of your schedule. Do some filing; make a phone call that requires little mental effort; take a bathroom break from a meeting and walk around the floor; clean up your desktop; stare out the window; step outside for a walk around the building and a little sunshine.

You can boost the power of your ultradian cycles by planning for them throughout the day. At the beginning of each day, make a to-do list that’s prioritized from high-energy-consuming tasks to low. Instead of heading straight down your list, cycle through the high and low intensity tasks.

This way, says Rossi, “you don’t waste precious peak moments of high energy on less important work.”

The bonus: You may actually end up getting a lot more done. 

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