Body Clock Imbalance? Blame It On High-Fat Diet
November 18, 2007
According to a new study, a high-fat diet can disrupt the body’s internal clock and cause behavioral changes. Researchers at Northwestern discovered that mice fed on a high fat diet deviated from their normal activity patters-for instance eating during the day when they were supposed to be sleeping.
The findings of the team have been published in the November issue of the journal Cell Metabolism. Joe Bass, the leader of the research team said, “We found that as an animal on a high fat diet gains weight, it eats at the inappropriate time for its sleep /wake cycle. All of the excess calories are consumed when the animal should be resting. You can begin to see changes in the animals daily habits very rapidly within a matter of days.”
In recent years, scientists have been paying increasing attention to the connection between the circadian network and metabolism. Bass’s group and others recently uncovered a link between the body clock and metabolism. While the effects of molecular circadian clock on metabolic processes are well documented. In the new study, the mice received 45% of their calories from fat.
For humans, it’s recommended that no more than 30% of calories come from fat. “It’s not only activity and feeding that shifts, but also the molecular processes involved in metabolism,” said Bass. “The changes appear to be global. The clock is an ancient mechanism for matching behavior to changes in the external environment that vary in accordance with the rotation of the earth and the cycle of light and darkness. We now show that the clock is also clearly influences by the composition of the diet.”
Source: IANS
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