Another reason to avoid high-fat diet -- it can disrupt our biological clockDecember 29, 2008Indulgence in a high-fat diet can not only lead to overweight because of excessive calorie intake, but also can affect the balance of circadian rhythms - everyone's 24-hour biological clock, Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have shown. The biological clock regulates the expression and/or activity of enzymes and hormones involved in metabolism, and disturbance of the clock can lead to such phenomena as hormone imbalance, obesity, psychological and sleep disorders and cancer. While light is the strongest factor affecting the circadian clock, Dr. Oren Froy and his colleagues of the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition at the Hebrew University's Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Rehovot, have demonstrated in their experiments with laboratory mice that there is a cause-and-effect relation between diet and biological clock imbalance. To examine this thesis, Froy and his colleagues, Ph.D. student Maayan Barnea and Zecharia Madar, the Karl Bach Professor of Agricultural Biochemistry, tested whether the clock controls the adiponectin signaling pathway in the liver and, if so, how fasting and a high-fat diet affect this control. Adiponectin is secreted from differentiated adipocytes (fat tissue) and is involved in glucose and lipid metabolism. It increases fatty acid oxidation and promotes insulin sensitivity, two highly important factors in maintaining proper metabolism. The researchers fed mice either a low-fat or a high-fat diet, followed by a fasting day, then measured components of the adiponectin metabolic pathway at various levels of activity. In mice on the low-fat diet, the adiponectin signaling pathway components exhibited normal circadian rhythmicity. Fasting resulted in a phase advance. The high-fat diet resulted in a phase delay. Fasting raised and the high-fat diet reduced adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK) levels. This protein is involved in fatty acid metabolism, which could be disrupted by the lower levels. In an article soon to be published by the journal Endocrinology, the researchers suggest that this high-fat diet could contribute to obesity, not only through its high caloric content, but also by disrupting the phases and daily rhythm of clock genes. They contend also that high fat-induced changes in the clock and the adiponectin signaling pathway may help explain the disruption of other clock-controlled systems associated with metabolic disorders, such as blood pressure levels and the sleep/wake cycle. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Related Biological Clock Current Events and Biological Clock News Articles Java and nighttime jobs don't mix: study Night-shift workers should avoid drinking coffee if they wish to improve their sleep, according to research published in the journal Sleep Medicine. The food-energy cellular connection revealed Our body's activity levels fall and rise to the beat of our internal drums-the 24-hour cycles that govern fundamental physiological functions, from sleeping and feeding patterns to the energy available to our cells. U-M discovery about biological clocks overturns long-held theory University of Michigan mathematicians and their British colleagues say they have identified the signal that the brain sends to the rest of the body to control biological rhythms, a finding that overturns a long-held theory about our internal clock. WUSTL research finds individual cells isolated from the biological clock can keep daily time, but are unreliable Alexis Webb enters a small room at Washington University in St. Louis with walls, floor and ceiling painted dark green, shuts the door, turns off the lights and bends over a microscope in a black box draped with black cloth. Through the microscope, she can see a single nerve cell on a glass cover slip glowing dimly. Chemotherapy for breast cancer is associated with disruption of sleep-wake rhythm in women A study in the Sept.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that the sleep-wake activity rhythms of breast cancer patients are impaired during the administration of chemotherapy. Biological clocks of insects could lead to more effective pest control Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that the circadian rhythms or biological "clocks" in some insects can make them far more susceptible to pesticides at some times of the day instead of others. Biological Timekeeper Studies Reveal New Temperature Regulator and Track Clock Protein across a Day Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have made new inroads into understanding the regulatory circuitry of the biological clock that synchronizes the ebb and flow of daily activities. Balancing hormones may help prevent preterm births The relationship between two different types of estrogen and a hormone produced in the placenta may serve as the mechanism for signaling labor, according to a new study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Children of older fathers perform less well in intelligence tests during infancy Children of older fathers perform less well in a range of cognitive tests during infancy and early childhood, according to a study published this week in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine. In contrast, the study finds that children with older mothers gain higher scores in the same tests - designed to measure the ability to think and reason, including concentration, learning, memory, speaking and reading skills. School-based intervention is a promising model for improving adolescent sleep habits A study in the March 1 issue of the journal SLEEP shows that a school-based sleep intervention is a promising model for addressing adolescent sleep problems, given its high retention rate, cost-effectiveness and potential for promoting healthy sleep knowledge and practice. More Biological Clock Current Events and Biological Clock News Articles |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||