Proper nutrition for pilots
11-14-2019, 06:18 PM
#1
New Hire
Thread Starter
Joined APC: Oct 2019
Posts: 2
Proper nutrition for pilots
Hey guys so as everyone knows airports aren't necessarily known for their healthy eating options. A couple questions for you guys
What are the best ways you've found to stay on top of your nutrition while traveling?
What meal preps have you found to be reliable without sacrificing great taste?
How often do you find yourself settling for fast food because there's just no time?
What are the best ways you've found to stay on top of your nutrition while traveling?
What meal preps have you found to be reliable without sacrificing great taste?
How often do you find yourself settling for fast food because there's just no time?
11-15-2019, 01:16 AM
#2
Super Moderator
Joined APC: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,945
While not as easy as home, it’s really not a big deal. Most every establishment is somewhat conscious these days. On an overnight I can easily find anything that fits whatever I’m trying to do. I find calories to be a bit steeper at a restaurant vs home, but close enough to get the job done. I tend to not eat at the airport unless necessary. Typically I’ll hold myself over with something like a banana and a parfait at one of the shops. Filling and acceptable for me on health terms. Also more than enough salad options these days. In a pinch, even Dunkin’ Donuts has a snack thing that’s turkey sausage and veggie egg white. Get that with no cheese and a hash brown order for breakfast and while not nutritional, you’re still under 400 calories or so and getting the job done to hold you over till later.
11-15-2019, 06:09 AM
#3
Prime Minister/Moderator
Joined APC: Jan 2006
Position: Engines Turn Or People Swim
Posts: 39,280
About a decade ago I have a vivid recollection of spending a three-hour sit scouring the ATL airport for a banana or apple. No such luck.
But things are better now, most airports will have some healthier offerings... your odds and options will be better west of DEN.
You can also pack fruits and veggies, I do that to supplement whatever I can find on the road. Pretty much avoid fast food like the plague now.
Some folks elaborately pack all of their main meals for a four-day, or all of their food period. It can be done, but it's a bridge too far for me personally. I prefer sit-down meals, too many MREs back in the day I guess. These days I view airline trips as an extension of my life which should be more enjoyable than not, as opposed to just a mission to gut out to the end.
But things are better now, most airports will have some healthier offerings... your odds and options will be better west of DEN.
You can also pack fruits and veggies, I do that to supplement whatever I can find on the road. Pretty much avoid fast food like the plague now.
Some folks elaborately pack all of their main meals for a four-day, or all of their food period. It can be done, but it's a bridge too far for me personally. I prefer sit-down meals, too many MREs back in the day I guess. These days I view airline trips as an extension of my life which should be more enjoyable than not, as opposed to just a mission to gut out to the end.
11-15-2019, 07:46 AM
#4
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2018
Posts: 124
This isn’t for everybody. I started the keto diet a little while back and I’ve found that once I adjusted to the diet I can go much longer between meals with no issues with hunger or energy/mental clarity.
If I need to grab food at an airport I can usually find something that fits on the diet. Hard boiled eggs, Starbucks egg bites, most salads with a meat and dressing on the side, coffee with a good dose of heavy cream are some of the options I use.
On this diet I feel better than I have for a long time and I’m loosing fat/ maintaining muscle mass. I might need to order new shirts and pants.
If I need to grab food at an airport I can usually find something that fits on the diet. Hard boiled eggs, Starbucks egg bites, most salads with a meat and dressing on the side, coffee with a good dose of heavy cream are some of the options I use.
On this diet I feel better than I have for a long time and I’m loosing fat/ maintaining muscle mass. I might need to order new shirts and pants.
11-15-2019, 08:33 PM
#5
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Dec 2017
Position: Retired NJA & AA
Posts: 1,918
When insulin dependent diabetic pilots start getting back online I wonder how they'll manage? Can't exactly eat donuts or a pastry for breakfast. I could see early shows before the terminal food places open being a problem. Maybe there are enough healthy choices now it won't be an issue for the type of food available.
11-16-2019, 04:12 AM
#6
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2007
Position: A-300 F/O
Posts: 281
Time restricted eating
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/w...or-health.html
Dr Satchin Panda from the Salk institute and Dr. Rhonda Patrick PhD (Found my Fitness on YouTube) have some very interesting videos with some crazy scientific studies on this and other things.
Dr Rhonda is my new internet hot mad scientist girl friend. She is a clinical researcher for St. Jude’s with degrees in organic chemistry and biology. Search her videos on cancer, intermittent fasting, antioxidants, broccoli sprouts (yes, I said broccoli sprouts!), gut health and time restricted eating. She’s on Joe Rogan a lot. Her videos are very informative and one thing leads to another and before you know it 3 hours are gone and you are a lot smarter.
Dr William Li, MD Internal Medicine and big time cancer researcher wrote a book, Eat to Beat Disease, that is a very good companion to the knowledge dropped by Dr. Rhonda in her videos. https://drwilliamli.com
Dr. Rhonda frequently mentions Dr. Satchin Panda in some of her videos. In one study, women with breast cancer who did time restricted eating had a 30% lower rate of recurrence on their cancer. In one of her videos, Dr. Rhonda says it was 40% lower.
When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health (NYT, July 24)
Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it’s not just what we eat that’s critical for good health, but when we eat it.
A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm — by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example — could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble.
That is the premise of a new book, “The Circadian Code,” by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening.
This approach, known as early time-restricted feeding, stems from the idea that human metabolism follows a daily rhythm, with our hormones, enzymes and digestive systems primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon. Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed. Dr. Panda has found in his research that the average person eats over a 15-hour or longer period each day, starting with something like milk and coffee shortly after rising and ending with a glass of wine, a late night meal or a handful of chips, nuts or some other snack shortly before bed.
That pattern of eating, he says, conflicts with our biological rhythms.
Scientists have long known that the human body has a master clock in the brain, located in the hypothalamus, that governs our sleep-wake cycles in response to bright light exposure. A couple of decades ago, researchers discovered that there is not just one clock in the body but a collection of them. Every organ has an internal clock that governs its daily cycle of activity.
During the day, the pancreas increases its production of the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar levels, and then slows it down at night. The gut has a clock that regulates the daily ebb and flow of enzymes, the absorption of nutrients and the removal of waste. The communities of trillions of bacteria that comprise the microbiomes in our guts operate on a daily rhythm as well. These daily rhythms are so ingrained that they are programmed in our DNA: Studies show that in every organ, thousands of genes switch on and switch off at roughly the same time every day.
“We’ve inhabited this planet for thousands of years, and while many things have changed, there has always been one constant: Every single day the sun rises and at night it falls,” Dr. Panda said. “We’re designed to have 24-hour rhythms in our physiology and metabolism. These rhythms exist because, just like our brains need to go to sleep each night to repair, reset and rejuvenate, every organ needs to have down time to repair and reset as well.”
Most of the evidence in humans suggests that consuming the bulk of your food earlier in the day is better for your health, said Dr. Courtney Peterson, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dozens of studies demonstrate that blood sugar control is best in the morning and at its worst in the evening. We burn more calories and digest food more efficiently in the morning as well.
At night, the lack of sunlight prompts the brain to release melatonin, which prepares us for sleep. Eating late in the evening sends a conflicting signal to the clocks in the rest of the body that it’s still daytime, said Dr. Peterson.
“If you’re constantly eating at a time of day when you’re not getting bright light exposure, then the different clock systems become out of sync,” she said. “It’s like one clock is in the time zone of Japan and the other is in the U.S. It gives your metabolism conflicting signals about whether to rev up or rev down.”
Most people know what happens when we disrupt the central clock in our brains by flying across multiple time zones or burning the midnight oil: Fatigue, jet lag and brain fog set in. Eating at the wrong time of day places similar strain on the organs involved in digestion, forcing them to work when they are programmed to be dormant, which can increase the risk of disease, said Paolo Sassone-Corsi, the director of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at the University of California, Irvine.
“It’s well known that by changing or disrupting our normal daily cycles, you increase your risk of many pathologies,” said Dr. Sassone-Corsi, who recently published a paper on the interplay between nutrition, metabolism and circadian rhythms.
A classic example of this is shift workers, who account for about 20 percent of the country’s work force. Many frequently work overnight shifts, forcing them to eat and sleep at odd times. Nighttime shift work is linked to obesity, diabetes, some cancers and heart disease. While socioeconomic factors are likely to play a role, studies suggest that circadian disruption can directly lead to poor health.
In one experiment, scientists found that assigning healthy adults to delay their bedtimes and wake up later than normal for 10 days — throwing their circadian rhythms and their eating patterns out of sync — raised their blood pressure and impaired their insulin and blood sugar control. Another study found that forcing people to stay up late just a few nights in a row resulted in quick weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity, changes linked to diabetes.
In 2012, Dr. Panda and his colleagues at the Salk Institute took genetically identical mice and split them into two groups. One had round-the-clock access to high-fat, high-sugar foods. The other ate the same foods but in an eight-hour daily window. Despite both groups consuming the same amount of calories, the mice that ate whenever they wanted got fat and sick while the mice on the time-restricted regimen did not: They were protected from obesity, fatty liver and metabolic disease.
Inspired by this research, Dr. Peterson conducted a tightly controlled experiment in a small group of prediabetic men. In one phase of the study, the subjects ate their meals in a 12-hour daily window for five weeks. In the other phase, they were fed the same meals in a six-hour window beginning each morning. The researchers had the subjects eat enough food to maintain their weight so they could assess whether the time-restricted regimen had any health benefits unrelated to weight loss.
It did. On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure. Their systolic pressure, the top number, fell by roughly 11 points, and their diastolic pressure dropped by 10 points.
“It was a pretty large effect,” Dr. Peterson said. “It was exciting but also shocking.”
While studies suggest that eating earlier in the day is optimal for metabolic health, it does not necessarily mean that you should skip dinner. It might, however, make sense to make your dinners relatively light. One group of researchers in Israel found in studies that overweight adults lost more weight and had greater improvements in blood sugar, insulin and cardiovascular risk factors when they ate a large breakfast, modest lunch and small dinner compared to the opposite: A small breakfast and a large dinner. Dr. Peterson said it confirms an age-old adage: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.
Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics for Science Times and the Well blog. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”
https://goo.gl/4qKhi8
Dr Satchin Panda from the Salk institute and Dr. Rhonda Patrick PhD (Found my Fitness on YouTube) have some very interesting videos with some crazy scientific studies on this and other things.
Dr Rhonda is my new internet hot mad scientist girl friend. She is a clinical researcher for St. Jude’s with degrees in organic chemistry and biology. Search her videos on cancer, intermittent fasting, antioxidants, broccoli sprouts (yes, I said broccoli sprouts!), gut health and time restricted eating. She’s on Joe Rogan a lot. Her videos are very informative and one thing leads to another and before you know it 3 hours are gone and you are a lot smarter.
Dr William Li, MD Internal Medicine and big time cancer researcher wrote a book, Eat to Beat Disease, that is a very good companion to the knowledge dropped by Dr. Rhonda in her videos. https://drwilliamli.com
Dr. Rhonda frequently mentions Dr. Satchin Panda in some of her videos. In one study, women with breast cancer who did time restricted eating had a 30% lower rate of recurrence on their cancer. In one of her videos, Dr. Rhonda says it was 40% lower.
When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health (NYT, July 24)
Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it’s not just what we eat that’s critical for good health, but when we eat it.
A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm — by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example — could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble.
That is the premise of a new book, “The Circadian Code,” by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening.
This approach, known as early time-restricted feeding, stems from the idea that human metabolism follows a daily rhythm, with our hormones, enzymes and digestive systems primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon. Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed. Dr. Panda has found in his research that the average person eats over a 15-hour or longer period each day, starting with something like milk and coffee shortly after rising and ending with a glass of wine, a late night meal or a handful of chips, nuts or some other snack shortly before bed.
That pattern of eating, he says, conflicts with our biological rhythms.
Scientists have long known that the human body has a master clock in the brain, located in the hypothalamus, that governs our sleep-wake cycles in response to bright light exposure. A couple of decades ago, researchers discovered that there is not just one clock in the body but a collection of them. Every organ has an internal clock that governs its daily cycle of activity.
During the day, the pancreas increases its production of the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar levels, and then slows it down at night. The gut has a clock that regulates the daily ebb and flow of enzymes, the absorption of nutrients and the removal of waste. The communities of trillions of bacteria that comprise the microbiomes in our guts operate on a daily rhythm as well. These daily rhythms are so ingrained that they are programmed in our DNA: Studies show that in every organ, thousands of genes switch on and switch off at roughly the same time every day.
“We’ve inhabited this planet for thousands of years, and while many things have changed, there has always been one constant: Every single day the sun rises and at night it falls,” Dr. Panda said. “We’re designed to have 24-hour rhythms in our physiology and metabolism. These rhythms exist because, just like our brains need to go to sleep each night to repair, reset and rejuvenate, every organ needs to have down time to repair and reset as well.”
Most of the evidence in humans suggests that consuming the bulk of your food earlier in the day is better for your health, said Dr. Courtney Peterson, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dozens of studies demonstrate that blood sugar control is best in the morning and at its worst in the evening. We burn more calories and digest food more efficiently in the morning as well.
At night, the lack of sunlight prompts the brain to release melatonin, which prepares us for sleep. Eating late in the evening sends a conflicting signal to the clocks in the rest of the body that it’s still daytime, said Dr. Peterson.
“If you’re constantly eating at a time of day when you’re not getting bright light exposure, then the different clock systems become out of sync,” she said. “It’s like one clock is in the time zone of Japan and the other is in the U.S. It gives your metabolism conflicting signals about whether to rev up or rev down.”
Most people know what happens when we disrupt the central clock in our brains by flying across multiple time zones or burning the midnight oil: Fatigue, jet lag and brain fog set in. Eating at the wrong time of day places similar strain on the organs involved in digestion, forcing them to work when they are programmed to be dormant, which can increase the risk of disease, said Paolo Sassone-Corsi, the director of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at the University of California, Irvine.
“It’s well known that by changing or disrupting our normal daily cycles, you increase your risk of many pathologies,” said Dr. Sassone-Corsi, who recently published a paper on the interplay between nutrition, metabolism and circadian rhythms.
A classic example of this is shift workers, who account for about 20 percent of the country’s work force. Many frequently work overnight shifts, forcing them to eat and sleep at odd times. Nighttime shift work is linked to obesity, diabetes, some cancers and heart disease. While socioeconomic factors are likely to play a role, studies suggest that circadian disruption can directly lead to poor health.
In one experiment, scientists found that assigning healthy adults to delay their bedtimes and wake up later than normal for 10 days — throwing their circadian rhythms and their eating patterns out of sync — raised their blood pressure and impaired their insulin and blood sugar control. Another study found that forcing people to stay up late just a few nights in a row resulted in quick weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity, changes linked to diabetes.
In 2012, Dr. Panda and his colleagues at the Salk Institute took genetically identical mice and split them into two groups. One had round-the-clock access to high-fat, high-sugar foods. The other ate the same foods but in an eight-hour daily window. Despite both groups consuming the same amount of calories, the mice that ate whenever they wanted got fat and sick while the mice on the time-restricted regimen did not: They were protected from obesity, fatty liver and metabolic disease.
Inspired by this research, Dr. Peterson conducted a tightly controlled experiment in a small group of prediabetic men. In one phase of the study, the subjects ate their meals in a 12-hour daily window for five weeks. In the other phase, they were fed the same meals in a six-hour window beginning each morning. The researchers had the subjects eat enough food to maintain their weight so they could assess whether the time-restricted regimen had any health benefits unrelated to weight loss.
It did. On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure. Their systolic pressure, the top number, fell by roughly 11 points, and their diastolic pressure dropped by 10 points.
“It was a pretty large effect,” Dr. Peterson said. “It was exciting but also shocking.”
While studies suggest that eating earlier in the day is optimal for metabolic health, it does not necessarily mean that you should skip dinner. It might, however, make sense to make your dinners relatively light. One group of researchers in Israel found in studies that overweight adults lost more weight and had greater improvements in blood sugar, insulin and cardiovascular risk factors when they ate a large breakfast, modest lunch and small dinner compared to the opposite: A small breakfast and a large dinner. Dr. Peterson said it confirms an age-old adage: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.
Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics for Science Times and the Well blog. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”
https://goo.gl/4qKhi8
11-16-2019, 10:41 AM
#7
Perennial Reserve
Joined APC: Jan 2018
Posts: 11,502
Originally Posted by Tweetdrvr
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/w...or-health.html
Dr Satchin Panda from the Salk institute and Dr. Rhonda Patrick PhD (Found my Fitness on YouTube) have some very interesting videos with some crazy scientific studies on this and other things.
Dr Rhonda is my new internet hot mad scientist girl friend. She is a clinical researcher for St. Jude’s with degrees in organic chemistry and biology. Search her videos on cancer, intermittent fasting, antioxidants, broccoli sprouts (yes, I said broccoli sprouts!), gut health and time restricted eating. She’s on Joe Rogan a lot. Her videos are very informative and one thing leads to another and before you know it 3 hours are gone and you are a lot smarter.
Dr William Li, MD Internal Medicine and big time cancer researcher wrote a book, Eat to Beat Disease, that is a very good companion to the knowledge dropped by Dr. Rhonda in her videos. https://drwilliamli.com
Dr. Rhonda frequently mentions Dr. Satchin Panda in some of her videos. In one study, women with breast cancer who did time restricted eating had a 30% lower rate of recurrence on their cancer. In one of her videos, Dr. Rhonda says it was 40% lower.
When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health (NYT, July 24)
Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it’s not just what we eat that’s critical for good health, but when we eat it.
A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm — by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example — could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble.
That is the premise of a new book, “The Circadian Code,” by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening.
This approach, known as early time-restricted feeding, stems from the idea that human metabolism follows a daily rhythm, with our hormones, enzymes and digestive systems primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon. Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed. Dr. Panda has found in his research that the average person eats over a 15-hour or longer period each day, starting with something like milk and coffee shortly after rising and ending with a glass of wine, a late night meal or a handful of chips, nuts or some other snack shortly before bed.
That pattern of eating, he says, conflicts with our biological rhythms.
Scientists have long known that the human body has a master clock in the brain, located in the hypothalamus, that governs our sleep-wake cycles in response to bright light exposure. A couple of decades ago, researchers discovered that there is not just one clock in the body but a collection of them. Every organ has an internal clock that governs its daily cycle of activity.
During the day, the pancreas increases its production of the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar levels, and then slows it down at night. The gut has a clock that regulates the daily ebb and flow of enzymes, the absorption of nutrients and the removal of waste. The communities of trillions of bacteria that comprise the microbiomes in our guts operate on a daily rhythm as well. These daily rhythms are so ingrained that they are programmed in our DNA: Studies show that in every organ, thousands of genes switch on and switch off at roughly the same time every day.
“We’ve inhabited this planet for thousands of years, and while many things have changed, there has always been one constant: Every single day the sun rises and at night it falls,” Dr. Panda said. “We’re designed to have 24-hour rhythms in our physiology and metabolism. These rhythms exist because, just like our brains need to go to sleep each night to repair, reset and rejuvenate, every organ needs to have down time to repair and reset as well.”
Most of the evidence in humans suggests that consuming the bulk of your food earlier in the day is better for your health, said Dr. Courtney Peterson, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dozens of studies demonstrate that blood sugar control is best in the morning and at its worst in the evening. We burn more calories and digest food more efficiently in the morning as well.
At night, the lack of sunlight prompts the brain to release melatonin, which prepares us for sleep. Eating late in the evening sends a conflicting signal to the clocks in the rest of the body that it’s still daytime, said Dr. Peterson.
“If you’re constantly eating at a time of day when you’re not getting bright light exposure, then the different clock systems become out of sync,” she said. “It’s like one clock is in the time zone of Japan and the other is in the U.S. It gives your metabolism conflicting signals about whether to rev up or rev down.”
Most people know what happens when we disrupt the central clock in our brains by flying across multiple time zones or burning the midnight oil: Fatigue, jet lag and brain fog set in. Eating at the wrong time of day places similar strain on the organs involved in digestion, forcing them to work when they are programmed to be dormant, which can increase the risk of disease, said Paolo Sassone-Corsi, the director of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at the University of California, Irvine.
“It’s well known that by changing or disrupting our normal daily cycles, you increase your risk of many pathologies,” said Dr. Sassone-Corsi, who recently published a paper on the interplay between nutrition, metabolism and circadian rhythms.
A classic example of this is shift workers, who account for about 20 percent of the country’s work force. Many frequently work overnight shifts, forcing them to eat and sleep at odd times. Nighttime shift work is linked to obesity, diabetes, some cancers and heart disease. While socioeconomic factors are likely to play a role, studies suggest that circadian disruption can directly lead to poor health.
In one experiment, scientists found that assigning healthy adults to delay their bedtimes and wake up later than normal for 10 days — throwing their circadian rhythms and their eating patterns out of sync — raised their blood pressure and impaired their insulin and blood sugar control. Another study found that forcing people to stay up late just a few nights in a row resulted in quick weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity, changes linked to diabetes.
In 2012, Dr. Panda and his colleagues at the Salk Institute took genetically identical mice and split them into two groups. One had round-the-clock access to high-fat, high-sugar foods. The other ate the same foods but in an eight-hour daily window. Despite both groups consuming the same amount of calories, the mice that ate whenever they wanted got fat and sick while the mice on the time-restricted regimen did not: They were protected from obesity, fatty liver and metabolic disease.
Inspired by this research, Dr. Peterson conducted a tightly controlled experiment in a small group of prediabetic men. In one phase of the study, the subjects ate their meals in a 12-hour daily window for five weeks. In the other phase, they were fed the same meals in a six-hour window beginning each morning. The researchers had the subjects eat enough food to maintain their weight so they could assess whether the time-restricted regimen had any health benefits unrelated to weight loss.
It did. On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure. Their systolic pressure, the top number, fell by roughly 11 points, and their diastolic pressure dropped by 10 points.
“It was a pretty large effect,” Dr. Peterson said. “It was exciting but also shocking.”
While studies suggest that eating earlier in the day is optimal for metabolic health, it does not necessarily mean that you should skip dinner. It might, however, make sense to make your dinners relatively light. One group of researchers in Israel found in studies that overweight adults lost more weight and had greater improvements in blood sugar, insulin and cardiovascular risk factors when they ate a large breakfast, modest lunch and small dinner compared to the opposite: A small breakfast and a large dinner. Dr. Peterson said it confirms an age-old adage: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.
Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics for Science Times and the Well blog. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”
https://goo.gl/4qKhi8
Dr Satchin Panda from the Salk institute and Dr. Rhonda Patrick PhD (Found my Fitness on YouTube) have some very interesting videos with some crazy scientific studies on this and other things.
Dr Rhonda is my new internet hot mad scientist girl friend. She is a clinical researcher for St. Jude’s with degrees in organic chemistry and biology. Search her videos on cancer, intermittent fasting, antioxidants, broccoli sprouts (yes, I said broccoli sprouts!), gut health and time restricted eating. She’s on Joe Rogan a lot. Her videos are very informative and one thing leads to another and before you know it 3 hours are gone and you are a lot smarter.
Dr William Li, MD Internal Medicine and big time cancer researcher wrote a book, Eat to Beat Disease, that is a very good companion to the knowledge dropped by Dr. Rhonda in her videos. https://drwilliamli.com
Dr. Rhonda frequently mentions Dr. Satchin Panda in some of her videos. In one study, women with breast cancer who did time restricted eating had a 30% lower rate of recurrence on their cancer. In one of her videos, Dr. Rhonda says it was 40% lower.
When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health (NYT, July 24)
Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it’s not just what we eat that’s critical for good health, but when we eat it.
A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm — by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example — could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble.
That is the premise of a new book, “The Circadian Code,” by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening.
This approach, known as early time-restricted feeding, stems from the idea that human metabolism follows a daily rhythm, with our hormones, enzymes and digestive systems primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon. Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed. Dr. Panda has found in his research that the average person eats over a 15-hour or longer period each day, starting with something like milk and coffee shortly after rising and ending with a glass of wine, a late night meal or a handful of chips, nuts or some other snack shortly before bed.
That pattern of eating, he says, conflicts with our biological rhythms.
Scientists have long known that the human body has a master clock in the brain, located in the hypothalamus, that governs our sleep-wake cycles in response to bright light exposure. A couple of decades ago, researchers discovered that there is not just one clock in the body but a collection of them. Every organ has an internal clock that governs its daily cycle of activity.
During the day, the pancreas increases its production of the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar levels, and then slows it down at night. The gut has a clock that regulates the daily ebb and flow of enzymes, the absorption of nutrients and the removal of waste. The communities of trillions of bacteria that comprise the microbiomes in our guts operate on a daily rhythm as well. These daily rhythms are so ingrained that they are programmed in our DNA: Studies show that in every organ, thousands of genes switch on and switch off at roughly the same time every day.
“We’ve inhabited this planet for thousands of years, and while many things have changed, there has always been one constant: Every single day the sun rises and at night it falls,” Dr. Panda said. “We’re designed to have 24-hour rhythms in our physiology and metabolism. These rhythms exist because, just like our brains need to go to sleep each night to repair, reset and rejuvenate, every organ needs to have down time to repair and reset as well.”
Most of the evidence in humans suggests that consuming the bulk of your food earlier in the day is better for your health, said Dr. Courtney Peterson, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dozens of studies demonstrate that blood sugar control is best in the morning and at its worst in the evening. We burn more calories and digest food more efficiently in the morning as well.
At night, the lack of sunlight prompts the brain to release melatonin, which prepares us for sleep. Eating late in the evening sends a conflicting signal to the clocks in the rest of the body that it’s still daytime, said Dr. Peterson.
“If you’re constantly eating at a time of day when you’re not getting bright light exposure, then the different clock systems become out of sync,” she said. “It’s like one clock is in the time zone of Japan and the other is in the U.S. It gives your metabolism conflicting signals about whether to rev up or rev down.”
Most people know what happens when we disrupt the central clock in our brains by flying across multiple time zones or burning the midnight oil: Fatigue, jet lag and brain fog set in. Eating at the wrong time of day places similar strain on the organs involved in digestion, forcing them to work when they are programmed to be dormant, which can increase the risk of disease, said Paolo Sassone-Corsi, the director of the Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism at the University of California, Irvine.
“It’s well known that by changing or disrupting our normal daily cycles, you increase your risk of many pathologies,” said Dr. Sassone-Corsi, who recently published a paper on the interplay between nutrition, metabolism and circadian rhythms.
A classic example of this is shift workers, who account for about 20 percent of the country’s work force. Many frequently work overnight shifts, forcing them to eat and sleep at odd times. Nighttime shift work is linked to obesity, diabetes, some cancers and heart disease. While socioeconomic factors are likely to play a role, studies suggest that circadian disruption can directly lead to poor health.
In one experiment, scientists found that assigning healthy adults to delay their bedtimes and wake up later than normal for 10 days — throwing their circadian rhythms and their eating patterns out of sync — raised their blood pressure and impaired their insulin and blood sugar control. Another study found that forcing people to stay up late just a few nights in a row resulted in quick weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity, changes linked to diabetes.
In 2012, Dr. Panda and his colleagues at the Salk Institute took genetically identical mice and split them into two groups. One had round-the-clock access to high-fat, high-sugar foods. The other ate the same foods but in an eight-hour daily window. Despite both groups consuming the same amount of calories, the mice that ate whenever they wanted got fat and sick while the mice on the time-restricted regimen did not: They were protected from obesity, fatty liver and metabolic disease.
Inspired by this research, Dr. Peterson conducted a tightly controlled experiment in a small group of prediabetic men. In one phase of the study, the subjects ate their meals in a 12-hour daily window for five weeks. In the other phase, they were fed the same meals in a six-hour window beginning each morning. The researchers had the subjects eat enough food to maintain their weight so they could assess whether the time-restricted regimen had any health benefits unrelated to weight loss.
It did. On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure. Their systolic pressure, the top number, fell by roughly 11 points, and their diastolic pressure dropped by 10 points.
“It was a pretty large effect,” Dr. Peterson said. “It was exciting but also shocking.”
While studies suggest that eating earlier in the day is optimal for metabolic health, it does not necessarily mean that you should skip dinner. It might, however, make sense to make your dinners relatively light. One group of researchers in Israel found in studies that overweight adults lost more weight and had greater improvements in blood sugar, insulin and cardiovascular risk factors when they ate a large breakfast, modest lunch and small dinner compared to the opposite: A small breakfast and a large dinner. Dr. Peterson said it confirms an age-old adage: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.
Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics for Science Times and the Well blog. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”
https://goo.gl/4qKhi8
Wow!
Seriously?
I’m not eating MREs twice a day and I’m out of mortar and small arms range.
Life is good.
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