Circadian Disruption: The Hidden Cancer Link
Your day/night rhythm does more than just help you sleep better at night and feel more energetic during the day, it also regulates hormones, dramatically affects your metabolism and weight, and as new research suggests, is a crucial factor in cancer risk.
Studies like these:
- Circadian disruption in Cancer
- Circadian control of Tumor Immunosuppression
- Circadian rhythm in precision oncology
- and the most recent, and best review of the medical literature to date on the role your circadian rhythm may play in cancer development, this medical journal article The Diverse Roles of The Circadian Clock in Cancer, published April 2025 in Nature Cancer.
In that most recent metaanalysis, researchers careful review of over 38 published studies on cancer and circadian rhythm and find strong evidence that your circadian clock acts as a tumor suppressor, and misalignment can drive cancer development. Not only do they suggest that circadian rhythm disruption is a key link in early onset cancers, but correcting it can play a critical role in the prevention and treatment of cancer.
What to do about it?
Easy, focus on fixing your circadian rhythm. This will fix how you feel for the entire day and night, not just sleeping more deeply but waking with more energy, improving mood and emotional resiliency, balancing hormones, boosting your metabolism and helping to release unwanted weight, and maybe most importantly, lowering your cancer risk.
That means, you can’t just focusing on sleep at night, but understanding your body’s full 24 hour biological clock, the rise and fall of your cortisol and your melatonin, and how they both interplay. In today’s article, you will learn it all.
Here we go…
9 Holistic Ways To Decrease Cancer Risk,
Starting With Fixing Your Circadian Rhythm
1. The Best Way To Start:
Ground to the earth to realign your circadian rhythm immediately
The first, and most important is to get grounded daily. Connecting to the earth’s electrical signaling, that includes the Schuman Frequency as well as the Carnegie Curve, instantly tells your body what time of the day it is, and what season you are in, no matter where you are on the globe.
The earth is the main driving factor in your circadian rhythm, and if you are not connecting with the earth’s global electrical circuit, you are not getting this crucial information. It’s so powerful that one of the first applications of grounding was for treating jet lag, as it hooks you directly into the day night rhythm of the new time zone you are in.
It’s so important for other medical professionals to understand that circadian rhythm is not actually just driven by the sun, that I wrote an entire medical review on this exact topic. The earth is actually even more important than the sun in setting your day/night pattern and is a crucial missing piece for folks who typically only associate circadian rhythm with sun exposure.
If you are getting daily light and still not seeing any benefit, now you know why. Enter, the key importance of grounding.
Today I want to share with you my latest publication on the importance of grounding to maintain your circadian rhythm, so you can read it for yourself. Just published August 26, 2025 in the Journal of Medical Clinical Research & Reviews, I explain the earth’s role in making sure you sleep well at night, and wake refreshed the next day.
Sleep is absolutely non-negotiable, crucial for your long term health. While most practitioners focus on sun exposure to help set the day/night rhythm of your body, the earth itself is actually more influential in setting these patterns. My article explains exactly why.
If you’d like to read the article directly for yourself and/or share it with others, including your own in person physician, here is a PDF you can print:
The Earth’s Role in Circadian Regulation: Grounding to Set Daily Cortisol Pattern (printable PDF)
Here is the abstract of that article, and the graphic that I created to show in a nutshell why you need the earth in order to feel your bed, both day and night.
Abstract
Emerging evidence supports the hypothesis that Earth’s electromagnetic grid output—including its direct current (DC) potential, the Carnegie Curve and Schumann Resonance frequencies—plays a central role in maintaining and regulating circadian rhythms. While it is well-established that exposure to sunlight entrains melatonin production, this article proposes that grounding to the Earth may be equally vital in setting the cortisol rhythm. Historical research involving sensory-isolated bunker experiments revealed that removing the Earth’s natural electromagnetic fields can lead to desynchronization of the human circadian rhythm, independent of the influence of light exposure. Modern clinical studies show that sleeping while grounded significantly alters the cortisol profile, with measurable improvements in circadian regularity, sleep quality, stress response, and autonomic nervous system function. By reviewing historical and contemporary medical studies, this article proposes that the human body’s exposure to the Earth’s surface potential and resonant frequencies supports cortisol rhythm integrity and may, in some contexts, be more foundational than sunlight in regulating the day/night cycle. The Earth appears to act as a hormonal “clock setter,” particularly for the cortisol awakening response and overnight cortisol suppression, creating a tandem effect alongside melatonin to maintain a stable 24-hour biological rhythm.
Citation:
Laura Koniver. The Earth’s Role in Circadian Regulation: Grounding to Set Daily Cortisol Pattern. J Med – Clin Res & Rev. 2025; 9(8): 1-4
Clinical evidence that spending time outside on the earth is not just a theoretical idea but a truly actionable way to decrease cancer risk, a new study found that women who worked outside for years have a statistically significant lower risk of breast cancer thank those with less time spent outside. You can read that study here.
2. Assess Adrenal Fatigue
Spring is the time to heal your HPA Axis, support your adrenal glands, and get your cortisol regulated, all which will support circadian rhythm repair.
To help you assess your adrenal health, and know if you are in adrenal fatigue stage 1, stage 2, stage 3 or Adrenal Failure, I decided to go ahead and gift you my 5 day online Adrenal Repair class for free. If you have been through any kind of stressful transition or life circumstance — even fun, happy ones like marriage, a new job, a new baby! — chances are your adrenals could use a little TLC.
If you identify adrenal fatigue now, by summer you can be full recovered and feel better than you may have felt for years. Maybe better than you have even felt in your entire life. That’s because even babies can have adrenal fatigue from stress.
So you can actually be in adrenal fatigue from birth, did you know that? It’s true.
But did you also know it’s fully reversible, no matter how long you’ve been living on fumes?
That’s also true, and I will help you get there.
In this free 5 Day Adrenal Repair Class, you will get:
- 5 days of free emails packed full of guidance on how to assess if you are in adrenal fatigue, and how to truly heal your adrenals
- a deep understanding of why your cortisol gets out-of-wack
- actionable guidance that you can apply immediately to help normalize your cortisol
- uplifting videos, fun activities, easy and clear self assessment quizzes and so much more — to get you into the healing flow of easily and effortlessly repairing your adrenal glands — and you can keep all this material forever!
- BONUS: 9 years worth of free pre-recorded Q&A class to listen to as well!
Without understanding and implementing the crucial steps that I share with you in this class, there is no way to fully repair your circadian rhythm and reset your cortisol balance after a stressful life circumstance,
So let me help you right now with tons of fun, uplifting, actionable things you can do — today — to address adrenal fatigue. Click the button below to get enrolled for free in my Adrenal Class today, and share this link with your friends and family who may like to assess their adrenal function and see if this might be why sleep is difficult to get at night and energy is hard to keep during the day:
3. Get Walking
Daily walking — something as simple as just walking — is the best predictor of positive outcome in cancer recovery we have.
No stressful or intense exercise needed. Just being up and about daily is a better predictor of cancer recovery and reduces mortality rates better than any chemotheraputic agent we have, reports Dr. John Marshall, MD.
Published on Jan 13, 2013 in the Journal Of Clinical Oncology, researchers followed 2,300 colorectal cancer patients and measured their activity level before and after cancer diagnosis. The results?
- The more active they were, the better their long-term outcome.
- Even patients that were doing no physical activity prior to diagnosis… if they began increasing their activity level after diagnosis and during recovery, their outcomes were improved as well.
- Active colorectal cancer patients had a 0.58 risk reduction — this is a decrease in mortality rates by over half — which, as Dr. Marshall points out, is better than any chemotherapy we have available to date
- Those who were not active had an increased rate of mortality…. a 1.36 risk increase.
- Walking helped reverse sleep impairment during cancer treatment and supports better sleep during recovery
- Walking is so important during cancer treatment that it should be considered front line therapy
How active do you need to be to show the protective and healing benefits?
Not very active. It is way more important to just be up and walking around, decreasing sedentary time, then it is to exercise strenuously or to add on additional exercise modalities on top of walking
The amount of activity that triggered this protective benefit was only the equivalent of 20 minutes of walking a day. No jogging, no weight lifting, no exercise class, no machines. Just the equivalent of walking for 20 minutes each day, or about 150 minutes of walking a week.
And walking can help with other diseases, such as preventing diabetes. Exercising daily is great but if you are not feeling up for exercising, focus on simply reducing inactivity by walking. Even just standing up more often to break up sitting intervals… it all helps.
4. Eat organic
Pesticides and other chemicals (as well as the presence of genetically modified foods) harm our body and affect our ability to heal.
Eat organic whenever possible, wash produce well before consuming, eliminate convenience packaging (never microwave food in plastic containers and try to choose beverages in non-plastic containers when available) and filter your water.
A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2018 found a significantly reduced rate of over all cancer occurrence in individuals who consumed higher amounts of organic food. Looking at over 68,000 participants, those that consumed the least organic foods had the highest cancer rates, and those that consumed the most organic foods had the lowest over all cancer risk.
Eating organic dropped the over all risk of all cancers by 25%. Specific cancer rates varied, for example eating more organic foods can result in a 73% reduced risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and a 21% reduced risk of developing breast cancer.
Eating organic foods drops your body’s total toxic burden, as organic foods are less likely to contain pesticides than conventional foods. Not only is choosing organic better for the environment, it’s better for you. I know organic food is expensive and not always readily available, this is an issue that needs to be fixed on a governmental and corporate level… but do what you can to choose organic whenever possible.
More on this issue, and some great easy alternatives to fast food are waiting for you in this article I wrote for you a few years ago:
5. Add Key Supplements
During and after cancer treatment, patients often have nutritional depletion because nausea and vomiting during treatment can limit food intake drastically. Whole foods, unprocessed foods, Mediterranean and paleo style diets work well to get in plenty of veggies, fish, nuts, seeds… and don’t forget berries, well known for their cancer prevention properties. All phytonutrients and antioxidants are basically wonderful.
Adding supplements with high quality antioxidants, trace minerals and vitamins can help optimize nutritional status and boost mitochondrial function to get your energy back where you want it to be. Here are the ones I recommend starting with:
There are also some specific recommendations for supplements depending on cancer the type that you might want to ask your physician about… for example blueberry extract and/or green tea extract for decreasing breast cancer recurrence, curcumin for decreasing melanoma and prostate cancer recurrence , omega 3 fatty acids for decreasing colon cancer recurrence, glutathione for multiple different tumor types and more.
Ask your physician or oncologist for specific recommendations and inform your health care provider about all supplements you are taking.
6. Decrease gluten and sugar
Sugar and gluten are both pro-inflammatory to the body from head to toe (as well as suppresses the immune system!) Inflammation is what incites cellular change and that damage can increase your risk of cancer over time. Limiting or even eliminating these triggers from your diet is incredibly healing for your body. Not to mention, decreasing sugar and gluten both help protect your regenerative stems cells, boosting your wellspan. Sugar inhibits stem cell production and gluten is a neuro-irritant that increases neuroinflammation, I go into detail on that in this blog post:
One of the things on that list to protect stem cell reserve is grounding (from #1 above) which is another reason why it’s the most important practice on this list. I blog more about how grounding protects your stem cells right here:
Even if you can’t cut out sugar or gluten entirely, have a realistic goal of decreasing your consumption of these in half (and eating half as many artificially preserved foods) and you will be slashing your inflammation, thereby decreasing cancer risk.
7. Fast Overnight
Did your doctor tell you about the wonderful study that showed that fasting every night (going for 13 hours or more without eating between dinner and breakfast) dramatically reduced cancer recurrence? Published on March 31, 2016 in JAMA Oncology, new evidence supports the idea that fasting at night reduces the risk of cancer recurrence.
Every night as we sleep we all enter a mini-fasting period before we *break-the-fast* with breakfast each morning. Prolonging the amount of time spent fasting — skipping evening snacks all together and fasting for 13+ hours each night — reduced the risk of breast cancer according to a study that spanned thousands of patients followed for over a decade.
The study:
- Researchers followed over 2,400 women with early stage breast cancer.
- Patients were all between the ages of 27 and 70 years old and had no prior history of diabetes.
- The patients were followed for over 11 years after treatment to determine rates of breast cancer recurrence.
- The patients reported nightly sleep patterns, eating patterns, and had C-reactive protein (CRP) and Hemaglobin A1C (HbA1C) levels tested.
The results:
- Patients who ate at night (fasting less than 13 hours a night) had a 36% higher rate of breast cancer recurrence.
- Researchers also found that eating at night was associated with higher HbA1C levels and will significantly less restorative sleep over all.
- Increasing the nightly fasting duration by even 2 hours statistically significantly lowered HbA1C levels and increased sleep length at night.
- Consuming food after 8:00 PM significantly elevated the blood inflammatory marker CRP as well as correlated with an elevated Body Mass Index.
The bottom line:
Fasting for 13+ hours each night could be a drug free, simply, holistic, natural, healthy way to decrease cancer recurrence.
Try simply taking care to eat an early dinner and not eating again until breakfast (for example, fasting after a 6 PM dinner until a 7 AM breakfast) — that’s all it took to significantly modify the study participants rates of recurrent cancer.
8. Continue To Follow Up With Your Physician
Make sure you stay in close follow up with your medical team. They can help by offering monitoring, reassurance, lab studies and other medical support when necessary (such as sleeping medications for insomnia when holistic approaches are not enough.)
They can order labs to follow markers of inflammation such as C-Reactive Protein (CRP), cytokine levels, homocysteine levels, and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratios, all markers that can help you see tangible proof that your health is improving even when you don’t feel fully restored.
Also important, they can double check that your Vitamin D levels are good, which improves remission rates in multiple types of cancer as I blog about here, which is also one of the reasons that the researchers found women who worked outside had significantly less breast cancer rates than those who did not, as I mention at the beginning of this article.
To your longevity and regenerative well being!
xoxoxo,
Laura Koniver MD
