It’s all about timing

New light is being shed on the circadian rhythm, with enticing prospects for upping our health and even treating diseases. This while a disrupted body clock is being associated with an ever-growing array of health conditions from cancer to type 2 diabetes.

One major difficulty in this field of research is the task of accurately and quickly reading the body clock. An abundance of tests are now in development that should change that. They include examining hair cells, blood or saliva.

An offshoot of this field is “chronotherapy”, being administering drugs to treat diseases at certain times of the day. It is known that healthy cells in the body usually only divide at particular times, while cancer cells, for example, do all the time. So it may be possible to administer a drug in a higher concentration at a certain time with fewer side effects, for example.

Up until now the main marker of assessing our body clock time has been identifying when our pituitary gland starts to release a hormone called melatonin, which usually happens two to three hours before a person naturally falls asleep. Melatonin release is inhibited by bright light, which is why it is a good idea to sojourn in a low-light environment in the evening to help you blissfully drift off to the land of nod.

There is also mounting evidence that eating in line with your body clock matters almost as much as what is on your plate. For example, our bodies seem to process food and particularly carbohydrates better in the morning rather than later on in the day. A large carb-rich meal consumed late in the day could lead to higher glucose circulation in the blood, with over time an increased risk of type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome which involves a group of health issues including heart disease. We also seem to burn more calories when digesting food in the morning.

Scientists are really only scratching the surface in the relatively new field of chronotherapy, but the more that is revealed, the stronger the evidence that living in line with our body clock has tangible health benefits and tantalising prospects for treating diseases.

It would seem there is indeed something in the old adage “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”.