REAL LIFE NEWS: WOUNDS HEAL MORE QUICKLY IF THEY HAPPEN IN DAYLIGHT
by Hazed
If you’re planning to get into a fight, or do anything else which might result in your being wounding, better to do it during the day – because new research shows that wounds incurred in daylight heal faster than those you receive after dark.
Research by scientists at the UK’s MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology studied 118 burns patients and found that burns sustained at night took an average of 28 days to heal, but those that happened in daytime only took 17 days.
The explanation is to do with the body clock which follows a 24-hour cycle. Skin cells called fibroblasts, which rush to the site of an injury to close a wound, change their abilities over the 24-hour period. They are primed to react during the day, but at night they lose their ability to respond fast.
This isn’t much help with accidental injuries but it could have an effect on scheduled surgery, by carrying out operations based on the individual patients’ 24-hour circadian rhythms. Drugs can also be used to reset an individual’s body clock for night-time procedures.