Biorhythm Calculator and Plotter

In the nineteenth century, studies first began on certain life rhythms or cycles that were later termed "biorhythms". The word biorhythm is a compound of two Greek words, bios and rhythmos, which mean life and a constant or periodic beat. The theory of biorhythms defines and measures three basic and important life cycles in man: the physical, emotional, and intellectual.

Wilhelm Fliess, a highly respected and prominent doctor in Berlin, did pioneer work on biorhythms in the 1890s. Fliess, who had observed 23- and 28-day rhythms in many of his patients, began to collect statistics on the periodic occurrence of fevers, childhood disease, and the susceptibility to disease and death. With these statistics in hand, Fliess believed he had detected rhythms which were fundamental to man's life.

Dr. Fliess later developed two major biorhythm theories: first, that Nature bestows on man "master internal clocks" which begin counting time at birth and continue throughout life; and second, that one of these clocks regulates a 9-3-day cycle influencing man's physical condition and another regulates a 28-day cycle influencing emotions or degree of sensitivity.

A widely read man, Fliess speculated on why these two rhythms should prevail. He believed, much as we do today, that man is essentially bisexual in nature, composed of both male and female elements. Fliess called the 23-day physical cycle the male cycle, since it influenced strength, endurance, and vitality. He considered the 28-day cycle to be representative of the female element in all human beings; it governed sensitivity, intuition, love, and creativity-the entire emotional spectrum.

Subsequent research has reinforced the idea of the 23-day physical and 28-day emotional cycles. Of course, today few would agree with the premise that all physical components are male and all emotional matters female. Instead, both are now considered to be essential characteristics of each sex.

Wilhelm Fliess wrote extensively about the biorhythm theory, but the mathematics and statistics he used to support it were so massive and confusing that few people bothered to closely examine or to understand them. Still, the basic premise of the theory caught on. The idea of periodic rhythms in man created a considerable controversy among his colleagues, one which still exists today. Most scientists have accepted the fact that man's physical and emotional states are in constant flux, but many do not agree that these changes are influenced by regular biological cycles that start at birth.

One of Fliess' contemporaries who kept an open mind to his ideas was Sigmund Freud, a man with extremely revolutionary ideas of his own at the time. Early in his career, Freud showed extreme interest in and admiration for Fliess' theories, and they soon became very close friends. One hundred and eighty-four letters from Freud to Fliess have been published; unfortunately, the replies from Fliess have been lost.

Important ideas tend to spread rapidly in the scientific community. Dr. Hermann Swoboda, Professor of psychology at the University of Vienna, read Fliess' work while still a young man, and by the turn of the century was himself researching, lecturing, and writing on biorhythms. Swoboda, who detected a periodicity in the occurrence of dreams and thinking processes, and in fevers, asthma, heart attacks, and the outbreak of illness, believed his own investigations confirmed Fliess' observations on the 23-day and 28-day cycles. Swoboda contributed to the theory the notion of the "critical" day, when the cycle shifts from high to low or low to high; a day of instability and usually of some stress for most people.

when we seem to have more energy, vitality, and emotional control. There are days when these same feelings are at low ebb. And there are also those days when we react to situations in a totally unexpected way.

There are many people who support the biorhythm theory. Bertram Brown, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, has said, "These biorhythms have a lot of validity. They help explain in part everything from having a bad week to exciting scientific things like the varied effects medications have when administered at different times."

Douglas Kelley, a statistician with the National Safety Council, is quoted as saying: "When chemistry was at the state where biorhythm is today, it was called alchemy. But alchemy became chemistry, and within fifty years research may do the same for biorhythm."

On the other side is Colin Pittendrigh, an expert on biological rhythms at Stanford University. The Washington Post quoted him as saying, "I consider this stuff an utter, total, unadulterated fraud. I really know nothing about it because we've been unable to track it down. But I consider anyone who offers to explain my life in terms of 23-day rhythms a numerological nut, just like somebody who wants to explore the rhythms of pig iron price to 11 decimal places."

Against these pros and cons and lacking sufficient clinical methods to prove the theory, an alternative procedure is to apply it to numerous situations and to carefully note the results, rather than to constantly criticize its assumptions. This alternative is recommended to the reader. Numerous opportunities are provided throughout this book for the reader to test the theory. Actually, the situation is similar to accepting or rejecting the daily weather forecast. The forecast can't be proved. But it is too useful and important in the life of an individual to neglect or refuse to accept. Nor is one too concerned if the weather forecast is not completely reliable. I may carry my raincoat tomorrow when, in fact, the sun will shine brightly. However, I still feel rewarded in that I was prepared for the event of rain. I also know the next forecast is quite likely to be valid.

These are not unique circumstances for man. He has always had to choose between the objective and the subjective, that which he can feel versus that which he can sense, fact versus fancy if one pleases. Economic and social men are perfect examples. They cannot act through certainty because proof does not exist for the many actions they follow. Economic man - like biorhythmic man - must be completely informed. Being completely informed is to know all courses of action that are open to him. Against this criteria it is foolhardy, indeed, to completely ignore or refuse to examine the biorhythm theory. "Too stupid to come in out of the rain" is often a result of refusing to observe the forecast of rain. A hasty decision, made now, without regard to another time when mental capabilities may be supposedly keener, is the mark of insensitivity; and irrationality is often the inability or reluctance to observe all factors and possible courses of action available.

Everyone experiences days when everything he does seems to be right and, on the other hand, days when nothing he does seems to make any sense. This state of affairs is not new; man has long puzzled over the range of his own actions and feelings. Even Hippocrates, the traditional physician's physician, advised his students and associates some 2,400 years ago to observe the "good" and "bad" days among the healthy and the ill, and to take these fluctuations into consideration in the treatment of patients.

Although man understood that he acted, felt, and thought differently at different times, for centuries a fundamental question went unanswered, even unasked. At the end of the nineteenth century, Dr. Hermann Swoboda, professor of psychology at the University of Vienna, was prompted by his research findings to wonder whether there might not be some regularity or rhythm to these fundamental changes in man's disposition. Swoboda apparently was impressed by John S. Beard's report of 1897 on the span of gestation and the cycle of birth, and by the publication of a scientific paper on bisexuality in man by Wilhelm Fliess... ...Swoboda, in his first report, presented at the University ] of Vienna at the turn of the century, noted:
One does not need to have lived a long span of life before one comes to realize that life is subject to Consistent Changes. This realization is not a reflection on the changes in our fate or the changes which take place during various stages of life. Even if someone could live a life completely devoid of outside influences, a life during which Nothing whatever disturbs the mental or physical aspect, life would nevertheless not be the same day after day. The best of health does not prevent man from feeling unwell at times, or less cheerful than he is normally.

During his initial research between 1897 and 1902, Swoboda recorded the recurrence of pain and the swelling of tissues such as is experienced in insect bites. He discovered a periodicity in fevers, in the outbreak of an illness, and in heart attacks, a phenomenon Fliess had reported in a medical review, which led to the discovery of certain basic rhythms in man one a 23-day cycle and the other a 28-day cycle.

However, Swoboda, as a psychologist, was mainly interested in finding out whether man's feelings and actions were influenced by rhythmical fluctuations and whether these rhythms Could be precalculated. The results of his persistent research Can be summed up in his own words:
We will no longer ask why man acts one way or another, because we have learned to recognize that his action is influenced by periodic changes and that man's reaction to an impression can be foreseen, or predicted, to use a stronger term. Such a psychoanalysis could be called bionomy because, as in chemistry where the researcher Can anticipate the outcome of a formula, through bionomy the psychologist can anticipate, or predict, so to speak, the periodic changes in man.

Swoboda was an analytical thinker and a systematic recorder. His painstaking research in psychology and periodicity produced convincing evidence of rhythms in life. He showed a deep interest in the study of dreams and their origin, and noted that melodies and ideas would often repeat in one's mind after periodic intervals, generally based on a 23-day or a 28-day rhythm. In searching for the origin of these rhythms, Swoboda carefully noted the birth of infants among his patients and found that young mothers would often have anxious hours about the health of their babies during periodic days after birth. He reasoned that this phenomenon, which was often accompanied by the infant's refusal to take nourishment, was a sign of rhythmical development; on these days the tempo of digestion and absorption was apparently slower. He advised the mothers not to worry, since these periodic crises could be considered part of natural development and growth. Similar rhythmical turning points were reported in asthma attacks.

Swoboda's first book was Die Perioden des Menschlichen Lebens (The Periodicity in Man's Life). This book was followed by his Studien zur Grundlegung der Psychologie (Studies of the Basis of Psychology). In order to facilitate his research and also to encourage other scientists and medical doctors in the recording of the mathematical rhythms, Swoboda designed a slide rule with which it was fairly simple to find the "critical" days in the life of any person whose birth date was known. The instruction booklet was entitled Die Kritischen Tage des Menschen (The Critical Days of Man).

His most profound work was a 576-page volume entitled Das Siebenjahr (The Year of Seven), which contains the 23-day and 28-day mathematical analysis of the rhythmical repetition of births through generations. With documentation covering hundreds of family trees, he endeavored to verify that most major events in life, such as birth, the onset of an illness, heart attacks, and death, fall on periodic days and involve family relationships.

The second long-term rhythm, this one of 98-day duration, was ascribed by Fliess to the rhythmical changes of the feminine inheritance. Originating in the nervous system or fibers, it influences the emotions and one's degree of sensitivity. Fliess, a thorough researcher, explained his theories with firm conviction and documented them with an impressive collection of statistical data, tracing the origin of the rhythms back to birth. His revelations, to say the least, caused a good deal of Controversy among his colleagues. They accepted the fact that man's physical makeup and his emotions are continually changing; but it was, understandably, difficult for them to take the next step and agree that these changes were influenced not only by what man experienced in his everyday living, but quite fundamentally by his very biological constitution. To Fliess, it seemed as if nature had given man a master clock in addition to the more obvious rhythms that pulse throughout the animal and plant kingdom. There are, of course, innumerable examples of precise rhythms in all forms of life, from the simplest virus to the most complicated creatures.

In a book published in 1942, George Riebold, a gynecologist, reviewed the fundamental ideas developed by Fliess between 1908 and 1928. Riebold said that "some truth lurks in the idea that life follows a periodic rhythm . . . and that the periods of 23 days and 28 days which Fliess discovered are of frequent occurrence." Some of the discoveries, he reported, had been adopted into modern concepts of gynecology and otolaryngology.

The word rhythm is also used in reference to the menstrual cycle in woman, for which a 28-day periodicity is the apparent average. Two questions were foremost in the mind of the original researchers: First, why does this supposedly regular menstrual rhythm vary in length in different women (and even in the same woman) from about 26 to 35 days? Secondly, why should woman alone be subject to rhythmical development? Is not man also, the researchers reasoned, the combination and offspring of both male and female cell development? After Fliess had reported on bisexuality in man, he observed a 23-day rhythmical repetition in fevers and recurrent illness in some of his patients. This led him to believe that both a 23-day and 28-day rhythm affected the regularity of the menstrual rhythm and that all life is influenced by these two long-term rhythms. ...There is a lesson to be learned from the lifetime efforts of the pioneers in biorhythm, Swoboda and Fliess. It is included in these pages because it is important to an understanding of the history of biorhythm, or, for that matter, of just about any new idea that stretches the imagination of man beyond his common experience. Fliess was primarily a researcher in the field of life rhythms. In their questioning however, both Swoboda and Fliess felt that the problem of rhythms in nature could best be solved by examining as many facets of her manifestations as possible. Independently, both studied family trees, hoping to find out why births often followed a rhythmic family pattern. Curiosity led them to attempt to establish a biological pattern between siblings, and between the child and his parents and grandparents....

Their awe of nature led these pioneers to experiment with numbers as a tool in deciphering her wondrous accomplishments. The irony of their quest was that this very use of mathematics helped largely to defeat their attempts to gain wide acceptance for the very conclusions that mathematics helped them to reach. By applying numbers to the realm of man and medicine, Fliess had come up with concepts that were daring, original, and most important seemingly quite valid. Yet by burdening his published works with these encumbrances pages and pages of numerical tables, Charts, calculations, and proofs he frightened the medical profession as well as the public he sought to convince.

His critics said his presentation was too complex. His readers were either unable or unwilling to wade through the multitude of statistics, and although no one could disprove his mathematical calculations, it might have appeared that they almost discouraged analysis.

What has made the study of biorhythm such a fascinating experience is the fact that pieces of supporting evidence were discovered by researchers who not only did not know each other but were not even aware of the work previously done in the science. Yet results have been remarkably Consistent and encouraging , and new directions and dimensions have continued to be added to the established principles. So, in a very real way, it was with biorhythm's third major precept: the cycle of the mind.

During the 1920's Alfred Teltseher, a doctor of engineering and a teacher, reportedly Collected a large number of performance reports of high school and college students at Innsbruck. Himself a student of nature as well as of mathematics, Teltseher wondered why the intellectual Capability of students seemed to vary from time to time, and whether any exact pattern could be established. Unfortunately, my own search abroad brought to light no original documentation, scientific paper, or book of his, and so my knowledge of Teltscher's work is based on secondhand reports and on articles that discussed his findings.

Apparently, even the comparatively limited basis of his statistical sampling disclosed that an exact pattern could be established. The paper Teltscher supposedly prepared concluded that the students' high and low peaks of performance fluctuated in a definite 33 day cycle. He stated, in effect, that there were periods during which a student could readily grasp and absorb new subjects, and, on the other hand, there were comparable periods during which the capacity to think quickly and clearly was diminished. His associates and medical contemporaries ascribed this rhythm to periodic secretions of glands affecting the brain cells, possibly of the thyroid gland.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, meanwhile, Dr. Rexford Hersey at the University of Pennsylvania, assisted by Dr. Michael John Bennett, conducted a similar research between 1928 and 1932. Hersey reported the accidental discovery of a 33-day to 35 day rhythm, revealed by checking the emotions of workers in railroad shops over periods of many months. His findings were published in his book Workers' Emotions in Shop and Home. Donald A. Laird, director of the psychological laboratory at Colgate University, reviewed Hersey's discovery in an article that appeared in Review of Reviews, April 1935, entitled "The Secrets of Our Ups and Downs," and was reprinted in Reader's digest, August, 1935. At the conclusion Laird declared:

To most people moods are an eternal puzzle, no one knows whence they come or where they go. Science has recently discovered moods are by no means matters of chance. They are not, as we have long supposed, simply reactions to the success or failure of our plans. On the Contrary, they grow within us as a direct result of the rise and fall of our emotional energy. It has been proved that our bodies and minds produce, store up and spend our emotional energy in regular cycles.

Laird's comments, although widely read, failed to capture the imagination of the public or the medical profession.

A similar attempt was made a decade later by Myron Sterns, who, writing for Redbook in November, 1945, under the title "Do You Know Your Emotional Cycles?" tried to stir up some attention for the science. A month later, Reader's Digest picked up the Redbook article. Stearns quoted Hersey as having said: "Few people paid any attention to my book, except some far-sighted officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, who supported my work from the beginning." Hersey was also quoted as remarking that "everybody knows we have ups and downs, but we don't know what causes them."

At birth, the sinus-curves start to swing at the zero-point (going upwards). The length of the cycles varies:

* Primary curves

The score depends on your age measured in days. When calculating the Age in Days the leap days of course have to be regarded. Also, the hour of birth and current time at the day may influence the result.

Formula

Score = 100 * sin ( 2*PI*(180/PI) *(Age in Days / Cycle Length))

EXAMPLE: Physical curve for somebody, who is 10000 days old today: 
100 * sin ( 360 *(10000 / 23)) = 97%

Biorhythms Repeat

The primary curves will have the same state like birth exactly 23*28*33 = 21252 days after birth again. This will be at the age of 58 years, 2 months and about 7 days depending on the position of the leap years and length of the month.