Podcasts Health & Fitness Medicine FoundMyFitness Satchin Panda, Ph.D. on Time-Restricted Feeding and Its Effects on Obesity, Muscle Mass & Heart Health

Satchin Panda, Ph.D. on Time-Restricted Feeding and Its Effects on Obesity, Muscle Mass & Heart Health

Published: June 30, 2016, 10:41 p.m.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick speaks with Dr. Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California. Satchin's work deals specifically with the timing of food and it's relationship with our biological clocks governed by circadian rhythm and also the circadian rhythm in general.

In this video we discuss...

  • The fascinating history of experimentation that ultimately elucidated the location for the region of the brain necessary for a properly timed sleep-wake cycles.
  • The relationship between our body's "master clock" and it's many peripheral clocks.
  • Why infants sleep so intermittently, instead of resting for a longer, sustained duration like healthy young adults... and why this sustained rest also goes haywire in the elderly.
  • The fascinating work Dr. Panda took part in that lead to the discovery of a specialized light receptor in the eye that sets circadian rhythms and is known as melanopsin.
  • The important relationship between the relatively light insensitive melanopsin, which requires around 1,000 lux of light to be fully activated, and its control of the circadian clock by means of activation of the suprachiasmatic nucleus and suppression of melatonin.
  • The effects light exposure seems to have on next-day cortisol, a glucocorticoid hormone that regulates around 10-20% of the human protein-encoding genome.
  • The clever experimental design by which Dr. Panda and his colleagues discovered that certain circadian rhythms, especially of the liver, are entrained by when we eat, instead of how much light we get. This underlines the fact that, when managing are circadian rhythm, both elements are important!
  • One of the more surprising effects of time-restricted feeding in mice eating a so-called healthy diet: increases in muscle mass and even endurance in some cases.

Interested in trying out time-restricted feeding? Don't let your data points go to waste! You can try out time-restricted feeding and have a real impact on human research! Commit to 14 weeks and download Dr. Panda's mobile app to get started. Learn more at: mycircadianclock.org/participant