Food window boosts health

EATING all our food within a period of 10 hours can restore balance, stave off metabolic diseases and maintain health, suggests a study led by a scientist of Indian origin.

The study, conducted with mice, indicated that health problems associated with disruptions to the animals’ 24-hour rhythms of activity and rest – which in humans are linked to eating for most of the day or doing shift work – could be corrected by eating all calories within a 10-hour window period.

“For many of us, the day begins with a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.

“And it ends with a bedtime snack 14 or 15 hours later,” said Satchidananda Panda, professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

“But restricting our food intake to 10 hours a day, and fasting the rest, can lead to better health, regardless of our biological clock.”

The researchers demonstrated that circadian clocks struck a balance between the state of satiety and repair or rejuvenation during fasting.

When this internal clock was disrupted, as when humans did shift work, or when it was compromised due to genetic defects, the balance was disrupted and diseases set in.

For the study, which was published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the team disabled the genes in mice responsible for maintaining the biological clock, which also regulates many of the liver’s metabolic functions.

They then put two groups of mice on one of two high-fat diet regimes: one group had access to food around the clock, the other had access to the same number of calories but only during a 10-hour window period.

As expected, the group of mice able to eat around the clock became obese and developed metabolic diseases.

But the group that ate the same number of calories within the 10-hour period remained lean and healthy – despite not having an internal biological clock and thereby being genetically programmed to be morbidly ill. “Many of us may have one or more disease-causing defective genes that make us feel helpless and destined to be sick,” Panda said.

“The finding that a good lifestyle can beat the bad effects of defective genes opens new hope to stay healthy.” – IANS