The results were inspired by a study on mice, which revealed that a shift in eating behaviour may be detected when sleep-wake cycles and day-night cues don’t line up.
Scientists may have found the phenomena that damages and upsets the health of millions of shift workers who grind throughout the night while the rest of us sleep.
Working while fighting against the body clock may lead to weight gain, diabetes, cancer, depression, and poor heart health, as many studies reveal.
Now, new research has uncovered the link between ‘when’ you eat and the influence on your health. The finding was informed by a study on rodents, which revealed that a shift in eating behaviour may be detected when sleep-wake cycles and day-night cues don’t line up.
How was the experiment conducted?
A group of scientists at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom conducted study into the connection between hormones involved with sleep-wake cycles and the daily eating patterns of rats. They revealed that alterations in circadian rhythms (physical, mental, and behavioural changes that follow a 24-hour cycle) had a substantial impact on the rats’ eating behavior.
To disturb the rats’ natural body cycles, the researchers injected corticosterone, a hormone equivalent to cortisol in humans, either in synchronization with or out of phase with the light-dark cues. Corticosterone levels in rodents increase dramatically before waking and subsequently decline throughout the day.
Rats with undisturbed rhythms, when exposed to poorly timed corticosterone surges, consumed the same daily amount of food as the rats with in-sync rhythms and a control group that got no infusions.
However, they ate about half of their regular food consumption at moments when they would typically be resting.
Additionally, a drop in genes that regulate appetite likely contributed to a considerably greater desire to eat during the sedentary period of the rats’ day, according to the study.
“When we disturb the normal relationship of corticosterone with the day-to-night light cycle, it results in abnormal gene regulation and appetite during the period of time that the animals normally sleep,” University of Bristol neuroscientist and research author Stafford Lightman noted.