Adaptive significance of circaseptan reactive periods∗∗

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Abstract
During a 4-wk balneotherapeutic cure treatment, the optical and acoustical reaction times as well as the flicker and fusion thresholds, using the flicker test, were measured in 2-day intervals in 44 patients. For comparison 11 healthy inhabitants of this spa were examined in the same way, but without any cure treatment. Confirming earlier results, the course of all measured parameters in the cure patients exhibited a significant circaseptan periodicity, while in the control group no such periodicity was detected. Dividing the group of the patients into sub-groups according to the week day of their arrival at the spa, it could be shown that the phase position of the individual circaseptan periodicity depended on that start of the cure treatment, the maxima of the parameters shifting over the days of the week. This result confirms earlier findings concerning the circadian periodicity of death rate during cure treatment and further confirms that the circaseptan periodicity representes the time structure of reactive processes. In the control group a week rhythm of very small amplitudes in all parameters could be observed. Since it can be demonstrated that circaseptan periodicity characterizes the course of compensating reactions (i.e., erythropoietic reaction to low-pressure stimuli, muscle-strength training, compensating growth), then circaseptan periods signify the time structure of adaptive processes.