Eat Well and Sleep Soundly, in These Two Good Health Abounds

Can Food Intake Influence Our Sleeping Pattern? There are few facts in life that are rock solid: food and sleep are among them. Everyone has to sleep - and obviously everyone has to eat. However, do these two fundamental pillars of bodily existence influence each other and if yes, in what way?

The WHY and WHEN of sleep is well studied and is known as the two-process-model of sleep-wake regulation. Process S is defined as a homogenic sleep drive which is generated by sleep inducing substances in the brain (WHY). Process C is the circadian clock, which serves as an internal time keeping device. It controls the timing of most of the processes in our body and by regulating “alertness”, it can influence WHEN we get tired.
The master clock in our brain (suprachiasmatic nucleus – SCN) can convey time cues (e.g., light-dark cycle) to the peripheral clocks which are ticking in almost every cell of our body. These in turn are thought to regulate local tissue physiology [1]. Now, this is where it gets interesting, since various metabolites can feed back onto the peripheral clocks and onto the SCN [2].
For instance, if food resources are restricted to a certain time of day, animals can go from being nocturnal to diurnal or vice versa on a behavioral level. This is also mirrored on the molecular level in tissues such as the liver [3, 4].

CHRONIC SLEEP DISRUPTION CAN LEAD TO OBESITY

 
Knowing how a system works means we can also trick it. For example, after a trans-continental flight, almost everyone suffers from jet lag. One way to adapt quicker is to eat meals corresponding to the local time, therefore already resetting our organ clocks to local time.
Conversely, if sleep rhythms and therefore eating rhythms are chronically disrupted, such as in shift workers, this can lead to obesity and other metabolic diseases [5].
All in all, in the hectic pace of modern life, we often neglect our body clocks concerning sleeping and food intake, thereby seriously endangering our health. As the medical psychologist Till Roenneberg said: "Time really is of the essence".

[1] Dibner et al, Annu Rev Physiol, 2010
[2] Morris et al, Mol Cell Endocrinol, 2012
[3] Damiola, Genes Dev, 2000
[4] Mistlberger, Eur J Neurosci, 2009
[5] Bass andTakahashi, Science, 2010

by Veronika Lang, PhD Alumna AG Kramer
This article originally appeared 2014 in CNS Volume 7, Issue 3, Nature vs Nurture