biological clock Archives - Amazing Health Advances

New Research Shows That Brighter Days Make for Better Nights

AHA Publisher — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 07:00:11 +0000

Mount Sinai Health System via Newswise – New York, NY(September 23, 2021) – A new study finds that more access to daylight at home improves circadian alignment, sleep and mental health in healthy adults. The REVOLV study was conducted by the Light and Health Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Icahn Mount Sinai) to explore how increasing daylight access at home affects circadian rhythm, sleep, vitality and mental health. The peer-reviewed paper was published on Sept. 23 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. “The REVOLV study demonstrates the impact of daylight on the physiological, behavioral and subjective measures of circadian health in a real-world environment,” said senior author Mariana G. Figueiro, Ph.D., professor and director, Light and Health Research Center, Icahn Mount Sinai. “The findings highlight the importance of ensuring people are exposed to circadian-effective electric light or daylight indoors as well as outside for human health and well-being.” As the primary environmental cue for the body’s master biological clock, light-dark patterns are key for circadian alignment and are fundamental to multiple dimensions of health, including sleep and mental health. Although daylight provides the proper timing, quantity and color of light for promoting circadian alignment, modern indoor lifestyles typically offer fewer opportunities for adequate daylight exposure. In 2020, people spent 65% of their waking hours at home, compared to 50% in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Leveraging this natural experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers tracked residents living in the Exo apartments in Reston, Virginia. During the crossover study, 20 residents spent one week in their apartments with electrochromic glass windows, also known as smart windows, which tint dynamically based on the location of the sun, and another week with standard windows with blinds. The participants wore sleep tracking devices, completed surveys on their health and well-being and provided saliva samples every 30 minutes over the course of five evening hours to measure their melatonin levels, a hormone that rises in the evening and triggers sleepiness. Researchers found that, in just one week, melatonin production in the body was delayed by 15 minutes when residents used their blinds, resulting in them falling asleep 22 minutes later and sleeping 16 minutes less each night. In contrast, consistent and quality sleep in the smart window condition resulted in increased vitality during the day, an 11% reduction in anxiety and a 9% reduction in stress. “When it comes to choosing a place to live, access to daylight and quality views are key features for prospective tenants,” said study author Piers MacNaughton, Sc.D., vice president of health strategy, View Inc. “This study shows that daylight and views are not just desirable amenities but also have fundamental impacts on our health and even our hormones.” In a previous study, the Urban Green Council looked at the prevalence of window coverings, which block daylight from entering residences when closed. They found that regardless of time of day, direction the window faced or whether a building was commercial or residential, 59% of the window area was covered by blinds or shades. More than 75% of the buildings they surveyed in New York City had more than half of their window area covered. The REVOLV study demonstrates that smart windows are one method of optimizing indoor daylight access in the built environment to improve occupant health without the drawbacks of visual and thermal discomfort, energy consumption and reliance on occupant behaviors that come with traditional solutions such as blinds. “In technology-driven markets like the Dulles Corridor in Northern Virginia, smart home technology, wellness-focused amenities and health-promoting activities are becoming increasingly higher priorities in making a final decision on where to call home,” said Jessica Murphy-Work, senior regional manager at Greystar. “In addition to improving access to daylight, design choices like incorporating smart windows can have implications on tenant attraction, retention and asset value.” The new REVOLV study reveals new insights about how daylight impacts our sleep, critical knowledge due to the ramifications these biological changes can have on our long-term health. Previous research has demonstrated that daytime light, especially natural daylight, can impact nighttime sleep quality. It has also been shown that electric lighting indoors tends to be dim and constant, which may not be beneficial for the circadian system’s needs. Lack of a robust light-dark pattern can lead to circadian disruption and poor sleep and health. A 2020 study, EVOLV, found that office workers in an office using smart glass to optimize daylight and views slept longer at night than those working in an office with traditional glass and blinds. Participants also scored 42% higher on cognitive assessments when exposed to optimized daylight and views. The benefits to sleep and cognitive performance were immediate, substantial and sustained. To read the original article click here.

The post New Research Shows That Brighter Days Make for Better Nights appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

New, Highly Precise ‘Clock’ Can Measure Biological Age

AHA Publisher — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 08:00:05 +0000

University of Cologne via EurekAlert – Using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, researchers at the University of Cologne have developed an ‘aging clock’ that reads the biological age of an organism directly from its gene expression, the transcriptome. Bioinformatician David Meyer and geneticist Professor Dr Björn Schumacher, director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Aging and Disease at the CECAD Cluster of Excellence in Aging Research and the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), describe their so-called BiT age (binarized transcriptomic aging clock) in the article ‘BiT age: A transcriptome based aging clock near the theoretical limit of accuracy’ in Aging Cell. We are all familiar with chronological age – our age since birth. But biological age can differ from it, at times significantly. Everyone ages differently. Scientists can use aging clocks to determine an organism’s biological age. Until now, aging clocks such as Horvath’s epigenetic clock have been based on the pattern of methylations, small chemical groups that attach to DNA and change with age. Using the transcriptome, the new clock takes into consideration the set of genes that are read from DNA (messenger RNA) to make proteins for the cell. Until now, the transcriptome was considered too complex to indicate age. Sometimes genes transcribe a particularly large amount of mRNA, sometimes less. Hence, so far it has not been possible to develop precise aging clocks based on gene activity. Meyer and Schumacher’s new approach uses a mathematical trick to eliminate the differences in gene activity. The binarized transcriptome aging clock divides genes into two groups – ‘on’ or ‘off’ – thus minimizing high variation. This makes aging predictable from the transcriptome. ‘Surprisingly, this simple procedure allows very accurate prediction of biological age, close to the theoretical limit of accuracy. Most importantly, this aging clock also works at high ages, which were previously difficult to measure because the variation in gene activity is particularly high then,’ said Meyer. BiT age is based exclusively on approximately 1,000 different transcriptomes of C. elegans, for which the lifespan is precisely known. Model organisms such as the nematode provide a controllable view of the aging process, allowing biomarkers to be discovered and the effects of external influences such as UV radiation or nutrition on longevity to be studied. The new aging clock allows researchers to accurately predict the pro- and anti-aging effects of gene variants and various external factors in the nematode at a young age. The aging clock also showed that genes of the immune response as well as signalling in neurons are significant for the aging process. ‘BiT age can also be applied to predict human age quickly and with very high accuracy. Measuring biological age is important to determine the influence of environment, diet or therapies on the aging process and the development of age-related diseases. This clock could therefore find wide application in aging research. Since BiT age is based purely on gene activity, it can basically be applied to any organism,’ Schumacher explained. To read the original article click here.

The post New, Highly Precise ‘Clock’ Can Measure Biological Age appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

When Should You Eat to Manage Your Weight? Breakfast, Not Late-Night Snacks

AHA Publisher — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 08:00:25 +0000

PLOS via Newswise – The balance between weight gain and weight gain loss is predominantly determined by what you eat, how much you eat, and by how much exercise you get. But another important factor is often neglected… Newswise — Published February 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, research conducted by Kevin Kelly, Owen McGuinness, Carl Johnson and colleagues of Vanderbilt University, USA shows that it’s not just how many calories you eat, but WHEN you eat them that will determine how well you burn those calories. Your daily biological clock and sleep regulate how the food you eat is metabolized; thus the choice of burning fats or carbohydrates changes depending on the time of day or night. Your body’s circadian rhythm has programmed your body to burn fat when you sleep, so when you skip breakfast and then snack at night you delay burning the fat. The researchers monitored the metabolism of mid-aged and older subjects in a whole-room respiratory chamber over two separate 56-hour sessions, using a “random crossover” experimental design. In each session, lunch and dinner were presented at the same times (12:30 and 17:45, respectively), but the timing of the third meal differed between the two halves of the study. Thus in one of the 56-hour bouts, the additional daily meal was presented as breakfast (8:00) whereas in the other session, a nutritionally equivalent meal was presented to the same subjects as a late-evening snack (22:00). The duration of the overnight fast was the same for both sessions. Whereas the two sessions did not differ in the amount or type of food eaten or in the subjects’ activity levels, the daily timing of nutrient availability, coupled with clock/sleep control of metabolism, flipped a switch in the subjects’ fat/carbohydrate preference such that the late-evening snack session resulted in less fat burned when compared to the breakfast session. The timing of meals during the day/night cycle therefore affects the extent to which ingested food is used versus stored. This study has important implications for eating habits, suggesting that a daily fast between the evening meal and breakfast will optimize weight management. This article has been modified. To read the original article click here.

The post When Should You Eat to Manage Your Weight? Breakfast, Not Late-Night Snacks appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.

Study Uncovers a Link Between Dopamine and Our Biological Clocks that Can Lead to Snacking, Overeating and Obesity

AHA Publisher — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 08:00:24 +0000

University of Virginia via Newswise – “…We’re learning that when we eat is just as important as how much we eat. A calorie is not just a calorie. Calories consumed between meals or at odd hours become stored as fat, and that is the recipe for poor health.” Newswise — During the years 1976 through 1980, 15% of U.S. adults were obese. Today, about 40% of adults are obese. Another 33% are overweight. Coinciding with this increase in weight are ever-rising rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and health complications caused by obesity, such as hypertension. Even Alzheimer’s disease may be partly attributable to obesity and physical inactivity. “The diet in the U.S. and other nations has changed dramatically in the last 50 years or so, with highly processed foods readily and cheaply available at any time of the day or night,” Ali Güler, a professor of biology at the University of Virginia, said. “Many of these foods are high in sugars, carbohydrates and calories, which makes for an unhealthy diet when consumed regularly over many years.” In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, Güler and his colleagues demonstrate that the pleasure center of the brain that produces the chemical dopamine, and the brain’s separate biological clock that regulates daily physiological rhythms, are linked, and that high-calorie foods – which bring pleasure – disrupt normal feeding schedules, resulting in overconsumption. Using mice as study models, the researchers mimicked the 24/7 availability of a high-fat diet, and showed that anytime snacking eventually results in obesity and related health problems. Güler’s team found that mice fed a diet comparable to a wild diet in calories and fats maintained normal eating and exercise schedules and proper weight. But mice fed high-calorie diets laden with fats and sugars began “snacking” at all hours and became obese. Additionally, so-called “knockout” mice that had their dopamine signaling disrupted – meaning they didn’t seek the rewarding pleasure of the high-fat diet – maintained a normal eating schedule and did not become obese, even when presented with the 24/7 availability of high-calorie feeds. “We’ve shown that dopamine signaling in the brain governs circadian biology and leads to consumption of energy-dense foods between meals and during odd hours,” Güler said. Other studies have shown, Güler said, that when mice feed on high-fat foods between meals or during what should be normal resting hours, the excess calories are stored as fat much more readily than the same number of calories consumed only during normal feeding periods. This eventually results in obesity and obesity-related diseases, such as diabetes. Speaking of the modern human diet, Güler said, “The calories of a full meal may now be packed into a small volume, such as a brownie or a super-size soda. It is very easy for people to over-consume calories and gain excessive weight, often resulting in obesity and a lifetime of related health problems. “Half of the diseases that affect humans are worsened by obesity. And this results in the need for more medical care and higher health care costs for individuals, and society.” Güler said the human body, through thousands of years of evolution, is hard-wired to consume as much food as possible as long as it’s available. He said this comes from a long earlier history when people hunted or gathered food and had brief periods of plenty, such as after a kill, and then potentially lengthy periods of famine. Humans also were potential prey to large animals and so actively sought food during the day, and sheltered and rested at night. “We evolved under pressures we no longer have,” Güler said. “It is natural for our bodies as organisms to want to consume as much as possible, to store fat, because the body doesn’t know when the next meal is coming. “But, of course, food is now abundant, and our next meal is as close as the kitchen, or the nearest fast-food drive-through, or right here on our desk. Often, these foods are high in fats, sugars, and therefore calories, and that’s why they taste good. It’s easy to overconsume, and, over time, this takes a toll on our health.” Additionally, Güler said, prior to the advent of our electricity-powered society, people started the day at dawn, worked all day, often doing manual labor, and then went to sleep with the setting of the sun. Human activity, therefore, was synchronized to day and night. Today, we are working, playing, staying connected – and eating – day and night. This, Guler said, affects our body clocks, which were evolved to operate on a sleep-wake cycle timed to daytime activity, moderate eating and nighttime rest. “This lights-on-all-the-time, eat-at-any-time lifestyle recasts eating patterns and affects how the body utilizes energy,” he said. “It alters metabolism – as our study shows – and leads to obesity, which causes disease. We’re learning that when we eat is just as important as how much we eat. A calorie is not just a calorie. Calories consumed between meals or at odd hours become stored as fat, and that is the recipe for poor health.” To read the original article click here.

The post Study Uncovers a Link Between Dopamine and Our Biological Clocks that Can Lead to Snacking, Overeating and Obesity appeared first on Amazing Health Advances.