Research Suggests Effects of Shift Work or Jet Lag On Our Body Clocks Can Be Reduced By Simply Changing Meal Times (qz.com)

Jonathan Johnston reports via Quartz: Around one in five people in Western countries could be putting their health at risk simply by going to work. This is because working shifts outside of the rest of the population's normal hours has been linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even declines in brain function. Scientists think this is because our bodies are programmed to run on cycles known as circadian rhythms, and changes in our routine caused by shift work or traveling long distances disrupts those rhythms. But our new research suggests that the effects of shift work or jet lag on our body clocks could be reduced simply by changing the times at which people eat. The key to this theory is the idea that each person doesn't just have a single body clock but rather a complex network of billions of cellular clocks found throughout the body. In humans and other mammals, there is a master clock within a region of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) and many peripheral clocks found elsewhere. For our research, we wanted to see how one aspect of this approach -- changing meal times -- affected circadian rhythms. We found that delaying meals by a certain amount caused a similar shift in some peripheral clocks, without changing the master clock. This is important because research in animals suggests peripheral clocks take longer to adjust to a new routine.

Comments

Tweaking the human

[rmdingler]

It's an interesting study, but ATFA, human trials were administered on ten healthy males for eleven days. By delaying the mealtime routine, blood glucose levels were affected... not exactly startling.

If it's true the people already affected by a lifestyle that conflicts with circadian rhythms are not typically pictures of health, we probably need a larger sample that includes overweight, jet-lagged, burnouts with dark circles under their eyes.

There seems to be enough evidence that routine within the many thousand year-old light and dark cycle is the healthiest lifestyle, but since somebody's got to man the late shift, tweaking the biological clock may be a great second option.

Re:Better yet, eat food endemic to arriving countr

[Opportunist]

Or have some tap water right after arriving in Mexico, you wouldn't believe how your body adjusts and how you can stay awake.