Theodor Hellbrügge: 85 years of age – Ad multos transannos, sanos, fortunatos et beatos

We honor Theo Hellbrügge's acclaimed endeavors in the rehabilitation, or rather the prehabilitation of handicapped children. So far, he has focused on obvious handicaps, and we trust that he will include concern for everybody's silent handicaps in the future by screening for abnormal variability inside the physiological range. Therein, we introduce cis- and trans-years, components of transdisciplinary spectra that are novel for biology and also in part for physics. These components have periods, respectively, shorter and longer than the calendar year, with a counterpart in magnetoperiodism. Transyears characterize indices of geomagnetic activity and the solar wind's speed and proton density. They are detected, alone or together with circannuals, in physiology as well as in pathology, as illustrated for sudden cardiac death and myocardial infarction, a finding calling for similar studies in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). As transyears can beat with circannuals, and depend on local factors, their systematic mapping in space and time by transdisciplinary chronomics may serve a better understanding of their putative influence upon the circadian system. Longitudinal monitoring of blood pressure and heart rate detects chronome alterations underlying cardiovascular disease risk, such as that of myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death. The challenge is to intervene in a timely fashion, preferably at birth, an opportunity for pediatricians in Theo Hellbrügge's footsteps

Transdisciplinary unifying implications of circadian findings in the 1950s

A few puzzles relating to a small fraction of my endeavors in the 1950s are summarized herein, with answers to a few questions of the Editor-in-Chief, to suggest that the rules of variability in time complement the rules of genetics as a biological variability in space. I advocate to replace truisms such as a relative constancy or homeostasis, that have served bioscience very well for very long. They were never intended, however, to lower a curtain of ignorance over everyday physiology. In raising these curtains, we unveil a range of dynamics, resolvable in the data collection and as-one-goes analysis by computers built into smaller and smaller devices, for a continued self-surveillance of the normal and for an individualized detection of the abnormal. The current medical art based on spotchecks interpreted by reference to a time-unqualified normal range can become a science of time series with tests relating to the individual in inferential statistical terms. This is already doable for the case of blood pressure, but eventually should become possible for many other variables interpreted today only based on the quicksand of clinical trials on groups. These ignore individual differences and hence the individual's needs. Chronomics (mapping time structures) with the major aim of quantifying normalcy by dynamic reference values for detecting earliest risk elevation, also yields the dividend of allowing molecular biology to focus on the normal as well as on the grossly abnormal