We all have experienced that feeling when we go try to go to bed but just can not because we are craving something to eat. Well, I am here to tell you that that late-night snack is not as harmless as you think and in fact causes a series of events to occur.
The circadian clock describes that way that the reacts to external stimuli, such as sunlight, and acts accordingly depending on how we are synchronized with it. For example, in the morning rays of light come in indicating to your body that it is time to get up. This is how we live our lives; the circadian clock is responsible for the fluctuations of our body throughout the day such as, when we are hungry, when we are at our peak concentration, and when we are tired. However, it has been proven that this cycle can be interrupted or delayed by our actions.
A study was done where subjects ate a set eating schedule and then, about a week later, half of them switched to another eating schedule, while the other half remained the control. It was found that the subjects who remained with consistent eating schedules did not have any circadian cycles disrupted while the subjects who switched schedules were found to have several glucose cycles delayed and even had changes to adipose tissues. It was then concluded that inconsistent eating habits can be highly disruptive to the body’s natural processes.
Eating food has been proven to stimulate the monster, cortisol the daytime hormone, levels which has an inverse relationship with melatonin, the sleep hormone. Therefore, by having that late-night snack, you are actually turning on your digestive track and tricking your body into thinking its daytime and turning off the hormone that helps you sleep. And because our body works on a 24-hour clock, it typically takes several hours for the melatonin to come back on.
By eating food in the middle of the night, you are causing your body to shorten its sleep functions which are important to your overall wellbeing. So next time, be wary of the creature lurking in your kitchen.
Citation
Wehrens S. M. T., Christou S., Isherwood C., Middleton B., Gibbs M. A., Archer S. N., Skene D. J., Johnston J. D. (2017). Meal Timing Regulates Human Circadian System. Curr Bio. 27(12): 1768-1775.
This study is very interesting when analyzing the consequences of night shift work and circadian misalignment. People will purposely delay their melatonin onset by eating food and releasing cortisol to stay awake at night. I wonder if much research is done on attempting to permanently realign one's circadian cycle, or if it is possible to work around the health consequences causes by the disruption to the body's natural processes.
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting to find the inverse relationship between melatonin and cortisol. These days you hear all about diets promoting not eating close to when you are going to bed, or not snacking after dinner, I wonder what the correlation between the cortisol, melatonin and snacks may be when in relation to weight loss and circadian cycles. The study shown below may help you to dive into more of the old perspectives vs new ones. An interesting future study relating to my article could be the affects of different caloric intakes on melatonin and cortisol, therefore relating to your study of eating before bed and sleep affects.
ReplyDeleteKinsey, A. W., & Ormsbee, M. J. (2015). The Health Impact of Nighttime Eating: Old and New Perspectives. Nutrients, 7(4), 2648–2662. http://doi.org/10.3390/nu7042648