Our modern lifestyles mean that most of us don’t live our lives in sync with our circadian rhythms, which puts our health and well-being at risk. Eating and sleeping at the right time are important tools to help us align our circadian rhythms and reduce our risk of chronic disease.
In this episode, circadian rhythm expert Prof. Satchin Panda will tell us how light and food act as master regulators of our body clock, how aligning our lifestyles with our body clock can improve our health, mood and energy levels and how to do this in practice.
Satchin is a world-leading expert in the field of circadian rhythm research. He’s associate professor at the prestigious SALK institute, he’s recipient of the Dana Foundation Award in brain and immune system imaging and he’s also the author of two best-selling books, The Circadian Code and The Circadian Diabetes Code.
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Timecodes:
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Quickfire questions
03:02 What are circadian rhythms?
03:48 How do we know about circadian rhythms?
04:44 Are all body parts on a 24 hour clock?
06:40 How the body enters sleep mode
09:25 What happens during sleep?
12:08 Why you’re not sleeping enough
13:30 The surprising impact of daylight savings time
17:00 Circadian rhythms aren’t just about light
19:55 The dangers of shift work
21:20 Should you go to bed at sunset?
25:40 Why should stop snacking at night
26:10 Satchin’s famous mice study
33:00 The best eating window for health
37:27 Does intermittent fasting promote better food choices?
40:40 Should you drink black coffee when you wake up?
Satchin’s books:
The Circadian Code
The Circadian Diabetes Code
Books by our ZOE Scientists:
Every Body Should Know This by Dr Federica Amati
Food For Life by Prof. Tim Spector
Fibre Fuelled by Dr Will Bulsiewicz
Studies referenced in today’s episode:
Effects of 3 months of 10-h per-day time-restricted eating and 3 months of follow-up on bodyweight and cardiometabolic health in Danish individuals at high risk of type 2 diabetes: the RESET single-centre, parallel, superiority, open-label, randomised controlled trial, published in Lancet Healthy Longevity
Neuronal reprogramming of mouse and human fibroblasts using transcription factors involved in suprachiasmatic nucleus development, published iScience
Learning from circadian rhythm to transform cancer prevention, prognosis, and survivorship care, published in Trends Cancer
The Untapped Potential of Circadian Timing as a Variable for Discoveries and Reproducibility, published in Cell Mol Gastroenterol Hepato
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Episode transcripts are available here.