Health lies in healthy circadian habits | Satchin Panda | TEDxBeaconStreet
Summary
TLDRThis talk delves into the critical role of circadian rhythms in our health, explaining how these near-24-hour cycles, influenced by light and food intake, govern our sleep, metabolism, and overall well-being. The speaker discusses the disruptive effects of modern lifestyle on these rhythms, leading to chronic diseases. Innovative solutions like circadian lighting and timed eating patterns are presented as ways to realign our bodies with natural cycles, offering promising insights for disease prevention and treatment.
Takeaways
- 🌡️ Pathogens historically caused infectious diseases, but modern society faces more chronic diseases with no cure in sight.
- 🌞 Circadian rhythms, near-24-hour cycles, are crucial for adapting to Earth's day-night cycle and are encoded in our DNA.
- 🏆 The 2023 Nobel Prize recognized the importance of circadian clocks for health, influencing the speaker's research.
- 🧠 Our internal circadian clocks govern sleep, hormone levels, and performance throughout the day, even in isolation from external time cues.
- 🌙 Disruptions to these rhythms, such as late-night work or caregiving, can lead to poor health and chronic diseases.
- 👀 Light, particularly blue light, resets our circadian clocks, with melanopsin being a key protein in this process.
- 🏠 Spending most of our time indoors and exposure to screens at night can confuse our circadian system, affecting sleep and health.
- 🍽 The timing of food intake is critical for metabolic health; eating within an optimal window can improve circadian rhythm and prevent disease.
- 🧪 Research with mice demonstrated that time-restricted feeding can reverse obesity and disease, emphasizing the importance of when we eat.
- 💊 The circadian clock influences the effectiveness of medications and the timing of medical treatments, suggesting personalized healthcare based on body rhythms.
Q & A
What are circadian rhythms and why are they important for human health?
-Circadian rhythms are near-24-hour cycles that organisms, including humans, use to adapt to the 24-hour light-dark cycle on Earth. They are controlled by circadian clocks encoded in our DNA and are crucial for regulating sleep, metabolism, mood, and other bodily functions. Disruptions to these rhythms can lead to various chronic diseases.
How do circadian clocks affect our daily routines and health?
-Circadian clocks regulate our sleep-wake cycle, hormone release, and peak performance times. For instance, melatonin levels rise for sleep and cortisol levels rise for alertness. Disruptions, such as staying awake late, can lead to poor health and chronic diseases.
What role does light play in synchronizing our circadian rhythms?
-Light is a key factor in resetting and synchronizing our circadian clocks. Bright light in the morning, rich in blue light, activates a protein called melanopsin, which helps to align our internal clocks with the day-night cycle.
How does the timing of food intake affect our circadian rhythms and health?
-The timing of food intake is crucial for maintaining metabolic balance. Eating at the right times allows for efficient digestion and energy use, while irregular eating patterns can lead to weight gain and diseases. Eating within a restricted time window, such as 8 to 12 hours, can improve circadian rhythm and health.
What is the significance of the Nobel Prize mentioned in the script for circadian rhythm research?
-The Nobel Prize awarded to three scientific leaders in the field of circadian rhythms highlights the fundamental importance of circadian clocks for health. It recognizes the groundbreaking work in understanding how these biological clocks influence our physiology and well-being.
How does the script suggest that our modern lifestyle, particularly indoor lighting, affects our circadian rhythms?
-The script suggests that spending most of our time indoors and exposure to bright screens at night can disrupt our circadian rhythms. This is because the blue light from screens can confuse our internal clocks, leading to poor sleep and other health issues.
What is the impact of circadian disruption on children's health and development?
-Circadian disruption during early childhood can make children more susceptible to developmental disorders such as ADHD and autism. Proper circadian rhythm maintenance is crucial for children's brain development and overall health.
How can circadian lighting in different environments like schools, offices, and hospitals benefit health?
-Circadian lighting can promote alertness, improve productivity, and support healing in various settings. For example, in schools, it can enhance learning and brain development; in offices, it can boost productivity; and in hospitals, it can aid in patient recovery.
What is the significance of the study where mice were fed within specific time windows?
-The study demonstrated that the timing of food intake is as important as the quantity and quality for maintaining health. Mice that ate within an 8 to 12-hour window were healthier than those that ate randomly, even when consuming the same diet and calories.
How does the script propose that technology can be used to improve our circadian rhythms and health?
-The script suggests that technology, such as smart devices, sensors, and programmed drug pumps, can be utilized to create optimal circadian lighting environments, monitor individual circadian rhythms, and deliver medications at the most effective times, thus improving health outcomes.
Outlines
🌡️ The Impact of Circadian Rhythms on Health
The speaker, Rhonda Jacobs, introduces the concept of circadian rhythms, which are near-24-hour cycles that organisms adapt to the Earth's 24-hour day-night cycle. These rhythms, controlled by circadian clocks encoded in our DNA, are fundamental to life and are recognized for their importance to health, as evidenced by the Nobel Prize awarded to scientists in this field. The speaker explains that our bodies have an internal clock that regulates sleep, hormone levels, and peak performance times, and that disruptions to these rhythms can lead to chronic diseases. The importance of aligning our daily routines with these natural cycles is emphasized for maintaining health.
🌞 The Role of Light in Regulating Circadian Clocks
This paragraph delves into how light, particularly blue light, resets our circadian clocks. The discovery of melanopsin, a blue-light-sensing protein in the eye, is highlighted. It is less sensitive to orange light, which allows for proper melatonin production and sleep in dim or orange-lit environments. However, the speaker points out that our modern lifestyle, with extensive indoor time and exposure to bright screens at night, confuses the circadian system, leading to poor sleep and potential health issues. The speaker also discusses the importance of circadian lighting in various settings, such as schools, hospitals, and homes, to promote health and productivity.
🍽️ The Influence of Eating Patterns on Health and Circadian Rhythms
The speaker explores the relationship between eating patterns and circadian rhythms, emphasizing that the timing of food intake is crucial for metabolic health. The body is prepared to digest food and absorb nutrients in the morning, and the circadian clock helps regulate this process throughout the day. Eating late into the night disrupts this cycle, leading to weight gain and diseases. An experiment with mice demonstrates that restricting eating to an 8- to 12-hour window can prevent obesity and disease, even on a Western diet. The speaker suggests that humans can benefit from similar eating patterns, and early studies show promising results in weight loss and improved health.
🛠️ Revolutionizing Healthcare with Circadian Rhythm Insights
The final paragraph discusses the broader implications of circadian rhythm research for healthcare. The speaker notes that the timing of drug administration, vaccinations, and surgical procedures can significantly affect their efficacy and side effects. The potential for technology to help monitor and regulate circadian rhythms is highlighted, with the possibility of smart devices, sensors, and drug delivery systems that work in sync with our natural rhythms. The speaker concludes by advocating for a new approach to health that considers circadian rhythms, moving beyond traditional methods like calorie counting and step tracking.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Circadian rhythm
💡Sanitation
💡Chronic diseases
💡Circadian clocks
💡Melatonin
💡Cortisol
💡Melanopsin
💡Daylight savings time
💡Gut microbiome
💡Circadian lighting
💡Time-restricted eating
Highlights
Pathogens were the cause of infectious diseases that killed humans for centuries.
Sanitation, vaccination, and antibiotics have controlled pathogens, leading to longer, healthier lives.
Chronic diseases are now a significant health challenge with no cure in sight.
Circadian rhythm, our near-24-hour body clock, plays a crucial role in health.
Circadian rhythms are controlled by circadian clocks encoded in our DNA.
The 2023 Nobel Prize recognized the importance of circadian clocks for health.
Circadian clocks are in-built and can be observed even in isolation from external time cues.
Every gene in our genome has a daily rhythm, influencing health and disease.
Disruptions to circadian rhythms can lead to chronic diseases.
The brain and every organ in the body have their own circadian clock.
Light is the primary synchronizer of our circadian clocks.
Melanopsin, a blue-light-sensing protein, plays a key role in resetting our circadian clock.
Indoor lighting and screen time disrupt circadian rhythms, affecting sleep and health.
Circadian lighting in various environments can promote health and productivity.
Food timing is crucial; eating at the wrong time can disrupt metabolic balance and lead to disease.
Eating within an 8 to 12-hour window can improve health and prevent obesity.
When we eat is as important as what and how much we eat for our health.
Circadian rhythms influence the effectiveness of drugs and the timing of medical treatments.
Circadian rhythm has the potential to revolutionize healthcare and treatment strategies.
Technological advancements can help monitor and enhance circadian rhythms for better health.
Transcripts
Translator: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
So pathogens like this used to cause infectious diseases
that killed humans for centuries.
Until sanitation, vaccination and antibiotics took care of pathogens
and gave us long, healthy lives.
But now, we spend nearly half of our life
fighting with these kinds of chronic diseases,
and for which there is no cure in sight.
So today, I'll share with you some really revolutionary ideas
of how to prevent, manage and cure these diseases.
And the idea is based on the concepts of circadian rhythm,
our near-24-hour rhythms.
To adapt to the 24-hour light-dark cycle, or day-night cycle, on our planet,
almost every plant and animal has circadian rhythms
that are controlled by what we call circadian clocks.
These are actually encoded in our DNA.
And this is so fundamental to life forms on our planet
that if we move any animal or human from this planet to another planet
that has identical conditions as the planet Earth
but has a day-night cycle other than 24 hours,
then we cannot easily survive.
In recognition of this fundamental property
of circadian clocks and health,
this year's Nobel Prize was actually awarded
to three scientific leaders in this field.
And I'm really honored that all three of them
have directly inspired and influenced my research.
So how do we know that these clocks are in-built?
For example, if you lock me inside an apartment
with no clue about outside time,
then my circadian clock will make me go to sleep
around 10:00 at night.
I'll go into deep sleep around 2:00,
and anticipating waking up,
my body will warm up around 4:00 in the morning.
As soon as I wake up and open my eyes, my sleep hormone melatonin will plummet,
and my stress hormone cortisol level will rise.
My peak performance time for brain will be around noon.
And my peak athletic performance will happen around late afternoon.
As evening rolls in, the circadian clock will crank up melatonin
to make me go to sleep again,
and my body will cool down to support my sleep.
So this will continue every 24 hours, even if I'm locked inside an apartment.
And these rhythms happen because almost every single gene in our genome
turns on and off at different times of the day.
Every single hormone and brain chemical
also rises and falls at different times of the day.
So to have these rhythms is actually to have health.
And when these rhythms break down,
when we stay awake late into the night finishing an assignment
or taking care of a loved one, then we feel horrible the next day.
And if we continue abusing our clock for weeks or months,
then all these chronic diseases can happen.
So it's very important, then, to know how are these clocks organized
so that we can nurture them much better.
So as you can imagine,
just like in our brain we have a clock that makes us go to sleep and wake up
every day,
the same brain clock sends chemical signals to the rest of the body.
But what is really surprising is that almost every organ in our body,
and even every single cell in our body has its own clock.
What does that mean?
It means that just like your brain clock makes us more efficient
at solving complex problems in the middle of the day,
and also the brain needs to sleep at night,
every organ has its own peak performance time
at certain times of the day.
And every organ needs to sleep, or rest and rejuvenate, at another time.
So all these clocks work together to give us daily rhythms in sleep,
metabolism, mood and even gut microbiome.
But how are these clocks connected to the outside world?
In fact, every morning as we wake up and open our eyes,
bright light goes through our eyes and resets or synchronizes this clock,
so that when daylight savings time changes,
or when we move from one time zone to another time zone,
light synchronizes all of our clocks to the new season or the new time zone.
But the property of light that resets our clock is very different.
Almost 15 years ago, we discovered a new blue-light-sensing protein
called melanopsin.
It's present only in 5,000 squiggly neurons in our eye.
And these light-sensing neurons
are literally hard wired to our brain clock,
to the master circadian clock.
But they have a very interesting property.
They're less sensitive to light, and especially to orange colored light.
So that means, in the evening,
as we move around and find our way under candle light or dim orange light,
the melanopsin is not activated.
It sends a signal to the brain as if it's dark outside
so that the brain clock makes a lot of melatonin
and we get a good night's sleep.
And in the daytime as we wake up,
go outside for at least an hour or so.
The daylight is very rich in blue light.
It fully activates melanopsin.
That synchronizes the brain clock nicely with the day.
It reduces sleepiness and depression, and increases alertness.
But the problem is, we spend more than 90 percent of our time indoors.
And at nighttime, bright screens and bright light activates melanopsin;
it sends a confusing signal to the brain, and the brain thinks it's not night yet,
so it produces less melatonin, and we sleep poorly.
The next day when we wake up,
as we spend most of our time indoors,
this indoor light is not rich in blue light,
so it again sends another confusing signal to the brain,
and the brain thinks it's not day yet.
So all the chemicals that should boost our mood
are actually not produced enough.
So we kind of go back and forth between insomnia and fogginess,
and if it continues for weeks or months, then a lot of diseases can happen.
And what is interesting is,
this is particularly important for children
because their brain is still developing.
And when children go through early childhood circadian disruption,
they are more prone to diseases like ADHD and autism.
So this new simple idea, that we need more bright blue light during the daytime
and less light, or darkness, at nighttime,
is starting a new lighting revolution.
And you are just getting a glimpse of this new light revolution
when your smart screen and computer screen dim down and turn orange at nighttime.
But there is more to it.
Just think about it: Circadian lighting at daycare and schools
will promote healthy brain development and promote learning.
Circadian lighting at home, factories, offices,
will promote alertness and improve productivity.
Circadian lighting at hospitals or retirement homes
will promote health and accelerate healing.
And in fact, right now, there is new circadian lighting
in our International Space Station to promote productivity of our astronauts
and make them have better nights' sleep.
So light is not the only factor that affects our clock.
In fact, just like light in the middle of the night
disturbs the brain clock and breaks the chemical balance in our brain,
food at the wrong time can disturb the peripheral clock
and break the metabolic balance in our body,
and that will push us towards disease.
Now, let's figure out how.
So in the morning, our stomach is actually ready
with the right amount of hormones and digestive enzymes,
and even good gut microbiome to digest food.
So after we eat our first breakfast,
a body absorbs enough carbohydrates and uses it to fuel our body.
At the same time, it saves a little bit of nutrient as fat.
As we continue at lunch and dinner, the same process continues.
And after the last dinner, last bite, a body slowly goes low on carb.
At the same time, the circadian clock cranks up morning fat.
And after a few hours,
the clock turns into a reset and repair rejuvenation mode.
That means that it turns on enzymes
that will break down cholesterol and toxins.
It also turns on mechanisms to repair the DNA
that we have damaged during the daytime.
And a lot of cells that are damaged on our stomach lining or our skin lining
are also replaced with healthy new cells
so that allergy-causing chemicals or bacteria cannot get into our body.
So after 12 to 16 hours of fasting, when we eat our next breakfast,
the cycle of nurture, rejuvenation continues.
But imagine if we delay that last bite late into the night.
So in this case, this daily rhythm in metabolism becomes shallow.
There is not enough time to burn fat,
and there is not enough time
to break down the toxins, cholesterol, etc.
So, you can imagine that somebody who eats within ten hours
might have a much better circadian rhythm,
whereas somebody who eats within 15 hours may not.
To test this idea, we went back to the old lab
and brought two identical groups of mice
born to the same parents, raised in the same room, same age.
And one group of mice got the standard Western diet
to eat whenever they wanted.
And then the second group was trained
to eat the same number of calories from the same food,
but they had to eat everything
within eight to 12 hours at nighttime when they're supposed to eat.
And we measured the food and weighed the mice carefully
every week for almost 18 weeks.
At the end of 18 weeks,
the first group of mice, who ate randomly, were obese,
where at the same time, they had a host of different diseases -
they were really morbidly sick -
where the second group that ate within eight to 12 hours
were completely healthy.
But what is more surprising is this:
If we take those morbidly sick mice
and give them the same diet, same number of calories,
and they have to eat only within eight to ten hours,
they become healthy.
This was a really earth-shattering, eureka moment for us,
because for the first time in the history of nutrition science,
we found that when we eat is as important as what or how much we eat.
Well then, how do we translate [that] to humans?
The first thing we wanted to know is, when do people eat?
To do that, we started a new study -
and people usually sign up for the study at mycircadianclock.org -
and then, since people love to take pictures,
we asked them to take pictures of every single thing that they eat or drink,
and we'd do the rest.
So when the pictures come to our server, we add them on a timeline
so that it's easy for us to figure out when they eat.
And they continue taking pictures for almost two to three weeks.
So that we can take a nice snapshot of their food life
during the weekdays and weekends.
And you can see, for this particular person,
he or she eats very randomly throughout the day.
And if you look at the weekday and weekend pattern,
those are also very random.
And if you combine the weekday and weekend,
there is another interesting thing that comes up.
It appears as if the person is on the East coast during the weekday
and comes to the West coast on the weekend,
which is also very bad for our circadian clock.
Now, if we combine all of this data
and plot it as if we are looking at a clock,
then you can see that this person was eating almost around the clock.
He's not an outlier, actually.
If we look at the first 150 people who had signed up,
nearly 50 percent of adults who actually have regular 8 to 5 jobs,
eat for 15 hours or longer.
So that means
if they have their first bite at 7:00 in the morning,
the last bite or last sip of wine happens at 9:00 or later.
What is interesting is, if we feed mice even a healthy diet,
and they eat for 15 hours or longer,
then slowly they become overweight and they get all these diseases.
So that's why we wanted to ask a very simple question.
We brought back people who were eating for 15 hours
and were a little overweight,
and asked them to eat whatever they want within ten hours of their own choosing,
and we wanted to see what happens to them.
So within three to four months,
these people actually boosted up their circadian rhythm
and they lost the excessive body weight that they had.
And over the last one year,
we've had thousands of people from all over the world
who are signing up either through our study
or doing this by themselves.
They try to eat all of their food somewhere between 8, 10 or 11 hours.
And when they do that, after a few weeks,
they're truly amazed by the untapped potential
of the healing power of circadian rhythm.
Almost all of them lose a little bit of weight,
but as they continue, they actually feel much better,
more energetic throughout the day.
They sleep much better at night,
and their mood is much better; they feel very sharp.
And slowly, over months,
they suffer less from different diseases of the gut, heart, immune system,
diabetes and even some of the mental diseases.
So we're truly excited about this study,
but at the same time, we learned another very important insight,
and let me share that with you.
That is, circadian clock tunes the potency of almost every drug that we take
for almost every disease.
So that means, at certain times of the day,
the drug is more potent and can cure you,
but at the wrong time of the day it can have a more severe adverse effect,
as if it's a poison.
So this is really important.
And the effect is not even [only] to drugs,
at what time of the day we take our flu shots,
at what time we schedule our surgery for liver or heart,
does matter.
Even cancer patients
who are going through chemotherapy or radiation therapy,
it really matters whether they schedule the chemo or radiation
in the morning or late in the afternoon.
So this new knowledge about circadian rhythm
is poised to start a new revolution in healthcare and healthy habits.
Because the current idea of taking care of your health
by counting calories and counting steps is just prehistoric.
And the same software and tools
that our tech companies are using to make us watch more arts,
sleep less and eat around the clock can be used for something better.
We can have devices and sensors
that can create a nice circadian lighting environment around us.
Sensors can go on us to monitor our own circadian rhythm every day
and how it interacts with the real outside world.
Devices can prompt us what to eat and when to eat
to boost our circadian rhythm.
And even there will be smart pills and programmed drug pumps
that can deliver the right medicine, at the right dose, at the right time,
even in the middle of our sleep,
so that we can get cured much faster.
So I truly believe that circadian rhythm has untapped potential
to prevent, manage and cure
many of the chronic diseases that affect billions of people.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)
Thank you.
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