Timing Is Everything – Why When We Eat Is Just As Important As What We Eat
We all know that nutrition is fundamental, and what we eat affects our health, but only recently have we begun to question nutrition and the impact of when we eat. Some nutritional scientists believe that when we eat can have a huge impact on our health, with research indicating that the best course of action is to sync our eating patterns with our circadian rhythm. This is our natural cycle of when to wake up, sleep, and eat which our body dictates. Recent studies show that repeated disruption of this rhythm can cause problems with your metabolism, as well as weight gain and disease.
Dr Satchin Panda is a circadian rhythms research expert at the Salk Institute in California. He claims that eating meals in a daily 8-10-hour window, where food is first consumed in the morning and the last of your food in the early evening, can go a long way in improving your metabolic health. You can read more from Dr. Satchin Panda on this in his new book ‘The Circadian Code’. This method is called early time-restricted feeding and was conceived from the logical theory that our digestive systems are primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon, not at 10 o’clock at night. According to Dr Panda’s research, the average person eats over a 15-hour period each day, therefore conflicting with this rhythm.
The hypothalamus of the human brain has a clock in control of our waking and sleeping cycles that is dictated by our exposure to bright light. Every other organ in the body also has its own internal clock that controls its daily cycle. Dr. Panda reveals his insight: “We’ve inhabited this planet for thousands of years, and while many things have changed, there has always been one constant: Every single day the sun rises and at night it falls. We’re designed to have 24-hour rhythms in our physiology and metabolism. These rhythms exist because, just like our brains need to go to sleep each night to repair, reset, and rejuvenate, every organ needs to have downtime to repair and reset as well.”
It is widely believed that it is better for your health to consume the majority of your daily food intake earlier in the day. This is because several studies into this area have shown that control of blood sugar levels is best in the morning and gets worse throughout the day, with the evening being the time when our bodies have the least control. In addition to this, food is digested more efficiently in the morning and more calories are burnt.
Additionally, the lack of sunlight in the evening prompts the brain to release melatonin to prepare us for sleep. If we eat late in the evening, then an opposing signal is sent through the body that it is still daytime, and we should therefore be awake. If this happens repeatedly then the biological clocks of different organs become unsynchronised and everything gets disrupted with potential negative health effects.
If we disrupt the clock in our brain, then fatigue/jet lag-style symptoms kick in; disrupting the clocks of the organs involved in digestion puts an equal strain on these organs and forces them into activity during their natural resting period. This increases the chance of triggering various diseases. Nightwork is linked to heart disease, multiple cancers, obesity, and diabetes, with studies indicating a direct link between circadian disruption and ill health.
Some faculty of the Salk Institute, including Dr. Panda, carried out an experiment in 2012 involving two groups of genetically identical mice who were both given the same amount of the same high-fat, high-sugar foods. However, one group was given constant access to their food while the other was restricted to an 8-hour window each day. The result was that the mice who were unrestricted became overweight and ill, whereas the restricted mice did not, further emphasising the importance of time-restricted feeding and nutrition to good health.
It was this experiment with the mice that inspired Dr Courtney Peterson, a scientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Nutrition Obesity Research Centre, to carry out a similar study in a small group of pre-diabetic men. In stage 1, of the nutrition research, the men ate their meals within a 12-hour window each day for a 5-week period. In stage 2, the same men ate the same meals within a 6-hour window each day (starting in the morning). It is worth noting that the men were given enough food in the study to maintain their weight so that it could be assessed whether there were any health benefits to the early time-restricted feeding independent of weight loss. The outcomes suggested that early time-restricted feeding caused the men to have significantly lower blood pressure, lower insulin levels, lower oxidative stress levels, and reduced hunger at night.
Clearly, there is a body of evidence to suggest that eating earlier in the day is best for our metabolic health and we would benefit from condensing our food intake into a shorter time period where we eat the bulk of it earlier on in the day: more in the morning, less later on. If you want help and support with any aspects of your health, contact Bex here.
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