The Circadian Code
Dr Satchin Panda
Our circadian rhythms are controlled by circadian clocks that exist in all our cells. They are programmed to turn gene on or off at different times of the day or night, they have huge impact on every aspect of our health.
As we ignore precious sleep or exploit caffeine and alcohol, we overwork and overtrain, we not only damage our cells, we throw our circadian rhythm right out the window, leading into illness and serious health concerns.
If you want to understand more about how your cells work optimally that improves your health and longevity then take your time to read the article below.
I have paraphrased from the book some interesting parts that explains what we’ve done to damage our circadian rhythm and also information that helps you to improve your health.
Dr Satchin Panda’s research
A study done on light and time; Mice given food during the day (as they are nocturnal), their internal clocks changed and instead they synced to when they ate and fasted, ignoring the light signal.
Also learned from this experiment that a daily eating-fasting cycle drives almost every rhythm in the liver. Instead of thinking that all timing information comes from the outside world through the eye’s blue light sensor, we learned that just like the first light of the morning resets our brain clock, the first bite of the morning resets all other organ clocks.
This showed that it’s not so much what you eat, it’s when you eat as well.
We Are All Shift Workers
And if it weren’t bad enough that a shift-work lifestyle affects the way we feel the next day, our family members are in essence secondhand shift workers, as we may inadvertently disrupt their sleep as they wake up early or stay awake late to match our crazy schedules and keep us company.
The effects on their health are equally troubling. For instance, in a 2013 analysis of published papers on the topic, researchers found that children of shift workers not only had more cognitive and behavioral problems as compared to children raised by non-shift workers, they also had a higher incidence of obesity.
The Rhythm of Daily Life
Even before we wake up in the morning, our internal clock prepares our body for waking up.
It begins to shut down the production of the sleep hormone melatonin from our pineal gland (in the brain).
Our breathing becomes slightly faster and our heartbeat picks up a few beats per minute as our blood pressure rises slightly.
Our core body temperature notches up half a degree even before we open our eyes.
Our brains job…
The brain also produces quite a few hormones at night.
Human growth hormone is also produced when we sleep. In fact, people who have insufficient sleep produce less growth hormone.
This is extremely important for children because a lack of sleep can reduce the amount of this important hormone and can hinder growth.
How Circadian Rhythms Work: Timing Is Everything
When You Eat Affects your Clock
Our cells cannot make and break up body fat at the same time.
Every time we eat, the fat-making program turns on and the cells in our liver and muscles crete some fat and store it.
The fat-burning program slowly turns on only after the organs realize no more food is coming their way, and that takes a few hours after your last meal.
It takes a few more hours to deplete a good portion of stored body fat.
But when eating occurs at random times throughout the day and night, the fat-making process stays on all the time.
At the same time, glucose created from digested carbohydrates floods our blood and the liver becomes inefficient in its ability to absorb glucose.
If this continues for a few days, blood glucose continues to rise and reaches the danger zone of prediabetes or diabetes.
When you eat late at night or start breakfast at a wildly different time each morning, you are constantly throwing your body out of sync.
The Effect of Physical Activity on Timing
At night our muscles don’t need the same levels of nutrients and oxygen as they do during the day, when we are more likely to sue them.
This may be one reason why heart rate and breathing slow down at night, which helps the body cool down so we can sleep better.
Physical activity improves sleep.
Among teenagers, vigorous physical activity not only improved how quickly they fell asleep or how well they slept, it also improved their mood during the day, increased concentration, and reduced levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Among older adults (50 to 75 years old), moderate physical activity or even regular stretching improved sleep onset, sleep quality, sleep duration and reduced dependence on sleep medications.
Older adults with moderate physical activity also had fewer episodes of feeling sleepy during regular daytime activity.
When the timing of our sleep improves, our circadian rhythm improves.
Track and Test: Is Your Circadian Code in Sync?
A Circadian Code For The Best Night’s Sleep
The Stages of Sleep
Dreaming also occurs during REM sleep.
We typically have between three to five cycles of REM sleep per night, occurring every 90 to 120 minutes.
The first episode usually lasts for only a few minutes, then REM time increases progressively over the course of the night.
During this time, the brain focuses on learning and memory.
You may notice that between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., or in the first 4 hours after falling asleep, you get some of your best sleep.
This because these first few hours go toward paying back your sleep debt. This is why it may be harder to go back to sleep if you wake up after that 4-hour period:
You no longer have the sleep debt that was making you tired in the first place.
The next 3-plus hours of sleep go toward nurturing your brain and body, giving it the additional time it needs for repair and rejuvenation.
Shift workers who have to sleep during the daytime also experience circadian rhythm disruption.
Since this is not the typical time nor the optimal lighting for the circadian clock to send its signal for sleep, shift workers aren’t able to get the maximum number of sleep cycles during daytime, even if they try to sleep for 7 hours.
This is why when you nap in the daytime you can rarely sleep for more than 2 to 3 hours: Your circadian code won’t allow it.
Are You Sleeping Well?
This is the definition of insomnia: difficulty falling asleep.
The main culprits for insomnia are:
– Worry: increases the stress hormone cortisol, which is meant to keep us awake
– Too much food: keeps core body temperature too high for sleep
– Too little physical activity: reduces the production of the muscle hormone that promotes sleep
– Too much time spent in bright light in the evening: activates melanopsin and reduces melatonin production
The main causes of fragmented sleep are:
– Dehydration
– Ambient temperature being too hot or cold
– Acid reflux caused by eating too late in the evening
– Sleeping with a pet
– Snoring/sleep apnea
– Other noise
Poor Sleep Disrupts Your Circadian Code
Sleep deprivation directly affects our hunger and satiety hormones like ghrelin and leptin, both of which have a circadian nature.
Ghrelin is produced in the stomach whenever the stomach is empty, and it is a signal to the brain to feel hunger. Leptin is produced in fat cells and signals the brain that you are full.
However, poor sleep patterns disrupt these signals and make us more prone to overeat because the brain isn’t getting either of these two messages.
Food, Timing, and Sleep
When we eat, our core body temperature actually goes up as blood rushes to the gut (the core) to help digest and absorb nutrients.
So, eating late at night prevents us from getting into a deep sleep.
To have a good night’s sleep, we should have our last meal at least 2 to 4 hours before going to bed to ensure that the body is able to cool down.
Teens and Sleep
Teens are especially susceptible to light and breaking the circadian code.
Not only are they more likely to stay awake in the evening because of homework or their activities, there are also studies showing that teens are very sensitive to light.
That means exposure to bright light in the evening delays their sleep and lowers their melatonin production.
We can do at least two things to help our teens:
First, we can prepare an early dinner in the evening so that they have an empty stomach before they go to sleep.
They are most likely to fall asleep 3 to 4 hours after dinner.
At the same time, we should also educate them by telling them about the importance of darkness and sleep.
And perhaps we can establish a sleep friendly environment for them to do their homework, including a table with a spotlight or lamp that illuminates the table but not their eyes.
Melatonin Supplementation
Try taking melatonin supplements 2 to 3 hours before going to bed.
However, be aware that melatonin can interfere with blood glucose regulation.
Blood glucose naturally goes up after a meal and takes an hour or longer to come back to its normal level. Taking melatonin after a meal slows down the decline in blood glucose to the normal level.
Therefore, it is a bad idea to take melatonin right after eating: Wait for a least an hour or two after a meal so that the melatonin doesn’t interfere with your blood glucose level.
The Best Ways to Wake Up
Is there any room for improvement to optimize waking up?
– the best way to wake up refreshed is to have enough sleep by going to bed early.
– Get some bright light immediately after waking up. Open your curtains or turn on your overhead light. Get as close to the window as possible.
– Take a quick, 5 to 15 minute morning walk. Check your plants, check the bird feeder, play with your dog in the backyard. Do anything that will take you out of the house and into bright daylight.
– Try to be consistent and wake up at the same time every day. If you are waking up 2 hours later on the weekends, it is a fair sign that you are not getting restorative sleep during the week.
Time Restricted Eating (TRE): Set Your Clock for Weight Loss
Stop Eating Like a Shift Worker
Our findings underscore the importance of one of the primary goals of this program: to align your eating schedule with your circadian code.
Start by establishing a 12 hour window for a week or two, and then try to decrease the time you eat by an hour a week. The reason to do this is that the optimum eating window is between 8 and 11 hours.
This is because the health benefits that you get from eating within a 12 hour window double at 11 hours, and double again at 10, and so on, until you reach an 8 hour window.
Eating for 8 hours or less may be feasible for some, or for many of us over a few days, but it becomes difficult for many people to sustain this over months or years.
While the science at 12 hours is impressive, lowering your window (to a few 8 hours) is significantly advantageous.
Most of your body’s fat burning happens 6 to 8 hours after finishing your last meal and increases almost exponentially after a full 12 hours of fasting, making any amount of time fasting past 12 hours highly beneficial for weight loss.
Once you’ve achieved your desired weight loss, you can go back to an 11 or 12 hour window and maintain the body weight.
The Typical TRE Day
If you start early, you are also likely to end early, or at least 2 to 3 hours before going to bed.
This is important, as melatonin levels begin to rise 2 to 4 hours before your typical sleep time.
Finishing your meals before melatonin begins to rise is necessary to escape the interfering effect of melatonin on blood sugar.
Eating protein earlier in the day triggers the right amount of acid secretion in the stomach.
So, instead of having more acid at night following a protein-rich dinner, you can switch to getting most of your protein in the morning and reduce your chance of getting heartburn and a poor night’s sleep.
This combination actually makes your digestive system work longer to digest food, and you will feel full (satiated and less hungry) for hours and will be less likely to snack on cookies, doughnuts, and other treats.
Snacking is okay during the day, but not at night
Eating late at night is by far the worst choice you can make, and it will totally defeat any benefits you’ve achieved throughout the day.
First, snacking late at night disrupts the digestive clock: You reignite your metabolism in your gut, liver, and throughout your body.
In this essence, you are literally waking the body when it is meant to be slowing down, cooling down and getting ready for sleep.
Although your brain told you that you’re hungry, your organs are not ready to process the food.
A second problem is that because your gut was not prepared to digest the food, the food won’t move as fast through your digestive system as it does during daytime.
When food sits in your stomach, your stomach will secrete acid to digest the food. But if the food is not moving, this can cause acid reflux, especially if you try to lie down and go right to bed.
When your melatonin level begins to rise in the evening and you eat, the food triggers the insulin response to begin.
The insulin helps your liver and muscles absorb glucose from your blood so that your blood glucose doesn’t rise too high.
But later at night, since insulin production is slowed down, there won’t be enough to soak up all the glucose from the food. This will leave your blood glucose levels high for a long period of time. At the same time, your body might store the excess sugar in the blood as fat instead of using it as fuel.
Chart Your Progress
For one month, write down when you took your fist and last bite each day, and then the next morning, record how many hours you slept that night.
First, notice if your sleep is improving, and how that improvement is correlated to your TRE.
Are you getting the best night’s sleep with the tightest TRE?
Or is just consolidating your eating within 12 hours doing the trick?
Then, track how the rest of your health is changing.
It may take a week or so before you notice if your health, mood, or energy improves. You might also see that you hit a plateau, then overcome it later in the month.
This is a very typical pattern.
Contact me for a chart to use again and again, or simply transfer the data into a normal calendar. Research shows that keeping an accurate record of your health is one of the best ways to stay on track.
Or, you can use the myCircadianClock app by signing up at mycircadianclock.org.
What not to Eat
No dark chocolate/hot chocolate in the evening.
One small bar of dark chocolate has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. If you love your chocolate, have dark chocolate, and eat it right after lunch.
The Clock, The Microbiome, and Digestive Concerns
The Gut Microbiome is Circadian Dietary fiber and other chemicals present in food can only be digested by gut microbes that live in the intestines. Therefore, maintaining a diverse mix of gut microbes is considered key to a healthy gut.
Without all the right bacteria we cannot fully digest our food, and the rest is stored as fat.
We also know that when we experience poor sleep or conditions that simulate jet lag or shift work, the gut microbiome composition is altered to a state that supports obesity.
These observations have raised a lot of interest in understanding how shift work, jet lag, and circadian disruption change gut microbes so severely that they can in turn, nudge the body toward obesity.
TRE in rodents optimizes the gut microbiome in such a way that the gut most efficiently processes and absorbs nutrients and excretes waste, and this produces better health.
The gut microbiome under TRE changes the breakdown and absorption of fiber in a way that a good chunk of the sugars are not absorbed but leave the body during elimination.
TRE also changes the gut microbiome in a way that converts bile acids into a different form that is excreted in stool. Since bile acids are produced from cholesterol, the more bile acid that leaves the body, the greater the reduction in cholesterol in the blood.
The Gut Microbiome Affects Our Food-Mood Axis
The food we eat and microbes in our gut work together to produce several hormones and chemicals that impact our mood and can determine whether we feel calm, anxious, depressed, manic, or panicky.
The right amounts of gut bacteria convert some of our food into the neurotransmitters that keep our brain balanced and working effectively, including dopamine, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), histamine, and acetylcholine.
However, some bacteria in the gut cause some carbohydrates to ferment and produce fatlike molecules called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which then have negative effects on our health. SCFAs can travel to the brain and affect brain development and function.
Many antibiotics can change the composition of our gut microbes, and at the same time the surviving microbiome can convert antibiotics into chemicals that affect brain function.
This may explain the side effects of some antibiotics, such as anxiety, panic, depression, psychosis, and even delirium. In babies and toddlers, the unintended effect of diet and medications can have a lifelong impact. For instance, the gut microbiome is now increasingly recognized as a contributing factor in autism.
Choose Foods that Protect the Microbiome
Preservatives are added to food to inhibit the growth of bacteria that spoil food.
When these preservatives get into our intestines, even at a low concentration, they inhibit the growth of gut bacteria, affecting the composition of the gut microbiome.
Some food preservatives, such as carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate 80 (an emulsifier used to make foods like ice cream smoother and easier to handle, as well as to increase resistance to melting), also have detergent-like properties that inhibit bacterial growth by thinning the protective coating around bacteria cells.
Food preservatives can corrode the protective mucosal lining that separates microbes from the cells that line the gut. When these unwanted microbes make contact with the cells in the gut lining, it can cause inflammation, such as colitis.
TRE promotes repair of the gut lining and may counteract the negative effects of a bad diet.
An assortment of different types of food that includes lots of different fresh fruits and vegetables promotes the healthiest gut microbiome. The good bacteria in the gut feed on the dietary fiber found in fruits, vegetables and complex carbohydrates.
When we don’t eat enough fiber, it’s like eating food with lots of preservatives: The microbes in our gut that have nothing else to eat will instead dine on the gut’s mucosal lining.
Taking Acid Medication for Months is a Bad Idea
Continuous use of these drugs is also linked to changes in bone density, causing osteoporosis and bone fractures. Medications for these diseases are known to affect gut function, including causing constipation.
This is how “drug use begets drug use” and we get into a spiral of using another drug to manage the adverse side effects of a previous drug.
This spiral can be stopped or slowed down with some simple changes to our lifestyle, including when we eat and when we go to bed.
A Break in the Circadian Code Can Lead to Obesity
As soon as we eat something, our pancreas releases insulin, which does two important jobs for metabolism: It helps absorb sugar from our blood into our liver, muscle, fat, and other tissues, and it signals these organs to convert some of the sugar to body fat.
This process continues for up to 2 to 3 hours after we eat, every time we eat. So, as we keep on snacking, our body remains in fat-making mode.
In the first half of the day, the pancreas produces more insulin, and at night it slows down.
The body remains in fat-making mode for a longer time after a late night meal.
Only after 6 to 7 hours of not eating does our body begin to start burning some fat.
This is the critically important aspect of TRE: to stop feeding the engine that is your body and let it run on the fuel it already has. This is the only way to prevent or reverse weight gain and, ultimately, obesity.
Excess energy beyond what can be stored as glycogen is converted to fat and is stored as fat in our adipose tissue, or fat cells.
When the adipose cells reach their full capacity, our body tends to store fat in cells or organs that are not designed to store it.
This compromises the function of organs such as the liver, muscles, and pancreas. When there is excess fat in cells, there is less space for the cells to carry out their normal tasks of generating energy.
This factor is linked to a range of diseases from fatty liver disease to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and even cancer.
Disrupting your circadian code is a major contributor to obesity.
First, reduced sleep confuses the brain hormones that regulate hunger. The brain cannot predict how long a person is going to stay awake, and since staying awake requires more energy than sleeping, the brain increases hunger hormone production.
As a result, people always eat more than what is needed to stay awake for just a few extra hours.
Sleep deprivation confuses the brain, making us choose unhealthy foods over healthier options. We crave energy-dense foods when we are overtired, and overeating these foods ultimately contributes to obesity.
Sleep deprivation also makes us lethargic and less active, which further contributes to excessive energy storage.
Every time we eat, our pancreas produces insulin to help the liver and muscles absorb blood sugar. At the same time, insulin promotes the biochemical pathway that makes fat from sugar.
When we spread our calorie intake over a long period of time, it keeps insulin production active, which tells our organs to keep making body fat.
TRE to the Rescue!
Once your body has a longer time to tap into stored glycogen by fasting or exercise, your muscles and liver cells may use up a good portion of glycogen and will make that space available the next day for storing glycogen. After a long period without food, when you eat your next meal, some of the excess carbohydrates will be first stored as glycogen, and there will be less pressure to store them as fat.
TRE not only reduces the pressure to store more fat, it also restores your body’s own rhythm to burn fat. Your liver and muscle cells need several hours of fasting at night to turn on their fat-burning mechanisms.
While a healthy fat cell can devote 90-plus percent of its volume to storing fat, a liver cell with more than 20 percent of its volume as fat is a sick cell. Therefore, even a small decrease in fat in the liver cell has a huge beneficial impact by improving liver function.
As the fat store depletes from the liver and muscles over the first few weeks of TRE, it makes room for more storage of glycogen.
And as space inside all of your cells becomes more available, the cells become healthier.
TRE increases the level of an enzyme that breaks down cholesterol in the liver. Cholesterol is usually broken down into bile acids.
A small increase in bile acids is considered good as it triggers a program in fat cells to burn off fat.
Overall, TRE reduces the drive to make and store excess fat, improves fat burning, normalizes cholesterol levels, and reduces inflammation. Lessfat, less cholesterol, and less inflammation means there is less of a chance of atherosclerosis or clogged arteries.
TRE Helps Control Inflammation
The reduction in inflammatory fat is being increasingly recognized as a contributing factor for starving off type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. And systemic inflammation reduces, joint pain and stiffness will go away, making physical activity possible and enjoyable.
TRE also improves the brain clock, which reinforces a barrier – similar to the one found in the gut – that coats the brain so that only oxygenated blood can enter the brain, and not bacteria, cellular debris, or other particles that could compromise brain function.
This can reduce local brain inflammation that causes many brain diseases, including dementia.
Cancer: The Ultimate Break in Circadian Rhythm
Cell Cycle checkpoints: One of the fundamental differences between a normal cell and a cancer cell is that normal cells don’t grow quickly nor do they divide that often, while cancer cells grow much faster and divide more often.
When normal cells divide, they need to be in perfect form.
The circadian clock in a normal cell makes sure that many control steps are in place for the cell to grow only at certain times, divide only once a day or every few days, and repair itself more regularly. Cancer cells escape all of these checks and balances.
They grow much faster by escaping the circadian mechanism that rations nutrients for the cells.
Cancer cells make more fat molecules that build new cells and they recycle their waste products to fuel their rapid growth. Cancer cells also don’t have a stringent DNA damage repair mechanism, so they slowly accumulate DNA damage.
Cancer Treatment and Circadian Timing
Since TRE is known to reduce chronic inflammation – which is a recipe for cancer – it makes sense that TRE for 11 hours reduces breast cancer risk. This is a very important finding as there are very few studies linking nutrition to cancer risk that have been validated with independent controlled human studies.
Since then, many studies with other types of cancers and different cancer drugs have shown the same conclusion – timing of cancer drugs can make the therapy less effective or more effective.
Addressing Light and Sleep for Optimal Brain Health
A common theme of all neurological diseases is sleep disruption. Our daytime function is essentially a series of decisions that involve cognition and emotion.
Sleep disruption affects this decision-making process. It is also commonly found in many psychiatric diseases, such as PTSD, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and more.
It is also a prominent factor in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.
These issues are rarely considered to be associated with abnormal sleep or circadian disruption, yet they should be. Taking care of a sleep problem is typically a major aspect of treating any of these brain health problems.
Having too much exposure to light at night reduces sleep, which is when most of the cleanup of damaged cell proteins occurs.
Dr Satchin Panda extends an invite:
Join His Team
Go to mycircadianclock.org to sign up to participate in a 14-week research study and get the free myCircadianClock app for your phone. It’s a great way to see a more detailed level of your eating and sleeping habits.
Coaches words:
Health goes beyond just food and exercise, go deeper into the mission of looking after your cells, this will help your overall health thrive and improve your longevity.
I will continue to bring you more information deeper than a meal plan and exercise workouts – I will help you learn more about your amazing body.
I highly recommend this book to learn more about how you operate and how best to treat those important cells of yours.
If you do purchase this book, please leave me a comment on your thoughts.
To your health and happiness..
