Gradual adjustment of circaseptan-circadian blood pressure and heart rate rhythms after a trans-9-meridian flight.

Circadian and circaseptan adjustment of blood pressure and heart rate after a transmeridian flight by a family of four was relatively fast, but it was not abrupt; it was not completed during the first week in the new setting. Gradual changes continued for the ensuing three weeks. The circadian and circaseptan rhythm characteristics and their adjustment in particular differed among variables in the husband: the circadian component of heart rate adjusted more rapidly than that of blood pressure. The adjustment also differed among two members of the family. A new phenomenon, namely a difference in circadian rhythm adjustment between husband and wife, is also described herein: the wife's circadian rhythm in blood pressure advanced by 9 hours within the 4-week span of recording following a 9-hour advance in living routine (after a 9-zone transmeridian flight); since both schedule and rhythm moved in the same direction (albeit not at the same rate), the behavior may be dubbed concursive. By contrast, the husband delayed to achieve the same adjustment: his behavior was anticursive. The phenomenon of a difference in direction of adjustment for different variables in the same subject has been described earlier as polarity, now qualified as intra-individual polarity, to separate it from the precedent of an intrafamilial or more broadly inter-individual polarity or partitioning, reported apparently for the first time and dubbed 'cursion'.