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This pretty interesting to me. I am thinking I need a lock with a timer installed outside my kitchen:
This article is related (but older)
When You Eat Matters, Not Just What You Eat ScienceDaily (May 17, 2012) — When it comes to weight gain, when you eat might be at least as important as what you eat. That's the conclusion of a study reported in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism published early online on May 17th.
When mice on a high-fat diet are restricted to eating for eight hours per day, they eat just as much as those who can eat around the clock, yet they are protected against obesity and other metabolic ills, the new study shows. The discovery suggests that the health consequences of a poor diet might result in part from a mismatch between our body clocks and our eating schedules.
"Every organ has a clock," said lead author of the study Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. That means there are times that our livers, intestines, muscles, and other organs will work at peak efficiency and other times when they are -- more or less -- sleeping.
Those metabolic cycles are critical for processes from cholesterol breakdown to glucose production, and they should be primed to turn on when we eat and back off when we don't, or vice versa. When mice or people eat frequently throughout the day and night, it can throw off those normal metabolic cycles.
"When we eat randomly, those genes aren't on completely or off completely," Panda said. The principle is just like it is with sleep and waking, he explained. If we don't sleep well at night, we aren't completely awake during the day, and we work less efficiently as a consequence.
To find out whether restricted feeding alone -- without a change in calorie intake -- could prevent metabolic disease, Panda's team fed mice either a standard or high-fat diet with one of two types of food access: ad lib feeding or restricted access.
The time-restricted mice on a high-fat diet were protected from the adverse effects of a high-fat diet and showed improvements in their metabolic and physiological rhythms. They gained less weight and suffered less liver damage. The mice also had lower levels of inflammation, among other benefits.
Panda says there is reason to think our eating patterns have changed in recent years, as many people have greater access to food and reasons to stay up into the night, even if just to watch TV. And when people are awake, they tend to snack.
The findings suggest that restricted meal times might be an underappreciated lifestyle change to help people keep off the pounds. At the very least, the new evidence suggests that this is a factor in the obesity epidemic that should be given more careful consideration.
"The focus has been on what people eat," Panda said. "We don't collect data on when people eat."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0517132057.htm
When mice on a high-fat diet are restricted to eating for eight hours per day, they eat just as much as those who can eat around the clock, yet they are protected against obesity and other metabolic ills, the new study shows. The discovery suggests that the health consequences of a poor diet might result in part from a mismatch between our body clocks and our eating schedules.
"Every organ has a clock," said lead author of the study Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. That means there are times that our livers, intestines, muscles, and other organs will work at peak efficiency and other times when they are -- more or less -- sleeping.
Those metabolic cycles are critical for processes from cholesterol breakdown to glucose production, and they should be primed to turn on when we eat and back off when we don't, or vice versa. When mice or people eat frequently throughout the day and night, it can throw off those normal metabolic cycles.
"When we eat randomly, those genes aren't on completely or off completely," Panda said. The principle is just like it is with sleep and waking, he explained. If we don't sleep well at night, we aren't completely awake during the day, and we work less efficiently as a consequence.
To find out whether restricted feeding alone -- without a change in calorie intake -- could prevent metabolic disease, Panda's team fed mice either a standard or high-fat diet with one of two types of food access: ad lib feeding or restricted access.
The time-restricted mice on a high-fat diet were protected from the adverse effects of a high-fat diet and showed improvements in their metabolic and physiological rhythms. They gained less weight and suffered less liver damage. The mice also had lower levels of inflammation, among other benefits.
Panda says there is reason to think our eating patterns have changed in recent years, as many people have greater access to food and reasons to stay up into the night, even if just to watch TV. And when people are awake, they tend to snack.
The findings suggest that restricted meal times might be an underappreciated lifestyle change to help people keep off the pounds. At the very least, the new evidence suggests that this is a factor in the obesity epidemic that should be given more careful consideration.
"The focus has been on what people eat," Panda said. "We don't collect data on when people eat."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0517132057.htm
This article is related (but older)
That Late-Night Snack: Worse Than You Think
ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Eat less, exercise more. Now there is new evidence to support adding another "must" to the weight-loss mantra: eat at the right time of day.
A Northwestern University study has found that eating at irregular times -- the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep -- influences weight gain. The regulation of energy by the body's circadian rhythms may play a significant role. The study is the first causal evidence linking meal timing and increased weight gain.
"How or why a person gains weight is very complicated, but it clearly is not just calories in and calories out," said Fred Turek, professor of neurobiology and physiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology. "We think some factors are under circadian control. Better timing of meals, which would require a change in behavior, could be a critical element in slowing the ever-increasing incidence of obesity."
The findings could have implications for developing strategies to combat obesity in humans, as the United States and the world battle what has been called an "obesity epidemic." More than 300 million adults worldwide are obese, including more than a third of American adults.
Details of the obesity study, which was led by Turek, will be published online Sept. 3 by the journal Obesity.
"One of our research interests is shift workers, who tend to be overweight," said lead author Deanna M. Arble, a doctoral student in Turek's lab. "Their schedules force them to eat at times that conflict with their natural body rhythms. This was one piece of evidence that got us thinking -- eating at the wrong time of day might be contributing to weight gain. So we started our investigation with this experiment."
Simply modifying the time of feeding alone can greatly affect body weight, the researchers found. Mice that were fed a high-fat diet during normal sleeping hours gained significantly more weight (a 48 percent weight increase over their baseline) than mice eating the same type and amount of food during naturally wakeful hours (a 20 percent increase over their baseline). There was no statistical difference between the two groups regarding caloric intake or the amount of activity.
Over a period of six weeks, both groups of mice were allowed to eat as much high-fat diet as they wanted during their daily 12-hour feeding phase. (Much like many humans, mice have a preference for high-fat food.) Since mice are nocturnal, the 12-hour feeding phase was during the day for those fed during normal sleeping hours and during the night for those fed during naturally wakeful hours. Food was not provided during the other 12 hours of their day.
Our circadian clock, or biological timing system, governs our daily cycles of feeding, activity and sleep, with respect to external dark and light cycles. Recent studies have found the body's internal clock also regulates energy use, suggesting the timing of meals may matter in the balance between caloric intake and expenditure.
The researchers next plan to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind their observation that eating at the "wrong" time can lead to weight gain.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0903110800.htm
ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Eat less, exercise more. Now there is new evidence to support adding another "must" to the weight-loss mantra: eat at the right time of day.
A Northwestern University study has found that eating at irregular times -- the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep -- influences weight gain. The regulation of energy by the body's circadian rhythms may play a significant role. The study is the first causal evidence linking meal timing and increased weight gain.
"How or why a person gains weight is very complicated, but it clearly is not just calories in and calories out," said Fred Turek, professor of neurobiology and physiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology. "We think some factors are under circadian control. Better timing of meals, which would require a change in behavior, could be a critical element in slowing the ever-increasing incidence of obesity."
The findings could have implications for developing strategies to combat obesity in humans, as the United States and the world battle what has been called an "obesity epidemic." More than 300 million adults worldwide are obese, including more than a third of American adults.
Details of the obesity study, which was led by Turek, will be published online Sept. 3 by the journal Obesity.
"One of our research interests is shift workers, who tend to be overweight," said lead author Deanna M. Arble, a doctoral student in Turek's lab. "Their schedules force them to eat at times that conflict with their natural body rhythms. This was one piece of evidence that got us thinking -- eating at the wrong time of day might be contributing to weight gain. So we started our investigation with this experiment."
Simply modifying the time of feeding alone can greatly affect body weight, the researchers found. Mice that were fed a high-fat diet during normal sleeping hours gained significantly more weight (a 48 percent weight increase over their baseline) than mice eating the same type and amount of food during naturally wakeful hours (a 20 percent increase over their baseline). There was no statistical difference between the two groups regarding caloric intake or the amount of activity.
Over a period of six weeks, both groups of mice were allowed to eat as much high-fat diet as they wanted during their daily 12-hour feeding phase. (Much like many humans, mice have a preference for high-fat food.) Since mice are nocturnal, the 12-hour feeding phase was during the day for those fed during normal sleeping hours and during the night for those fed during naturally wakeful hours. Food was not provided during the other 12 hours of their day.
Our circadian clock, or biological timing system, governs our daily cycles of feeding, activity and sleep, with respect to external dark and light cycles. Recent studies have found the body's internal clock also regulates energy use, suggesting the timing of meals may matter in the balance between caloric intake and expenditure.
The researchers next plan to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind their observation that eating at the "wrong" time can lead to weight gain.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0903110800.htm
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