In fact, not only the reversal of day and night will affect the biological clock, but also eating will affect the biological clock. Not eating according to the time often leads to the disorder of biological clock, which is also the reason why many people who often eat supper can't sleep well.
Recently, the team at Cambridge University found that insulin can even regulate the biological clock. Insulin affected by eating can change the protein accumulation of cellular biological clock and change the law of cell activity. If the eating time is disordered, such as eating late at night, the insulin in the body will also change, disrupting the original biological clock and causing various problems. Related research was published in the top academic journal Cell.
The accumulation of PER2 protein confuses the physiological clock! Many people speculated that there must be a relationship between diet and biological clock, but there was no evidence. The research team speculated that the biggest changes in mammals after eating are undoubtedly blood sugar and insulin. After further research, they found that insulin can change the accumulation of ——PER 2 protein, an important biological clock protein, while blood sugar has no such effect. This shows that insulin is the key molecule to regulate the biological clock.
How does the accumulation of PER2 protein affect the physiological clock? The researchers used drugs to inhibit insulin in mice, and found that in the absence of PER2 protein accumulation, even if mice ate at regular time, their sleep time was obviously chaotic. On the contrary, changing the eating time of mice will lead to the change of insulin and the obvious confusion of sleep time. After adjusting the feeding time to the original mode, the mice can gradually return to normal biological clock and sleep at the right time.
Simply put, an organism has a clock for eating and a clock for sleeping, and insulin will match them in an appropriate way. But if one of the clocks goes wrong, the whole body's work and rest will be in chaos.
People who often adjust the time difference may wish to consider adjusting their diet and restoring their biological clocks. In other words, the insulin disorder caused by midnight snack will really destroy our biological clock. In fact, this result is not too surprising. After all, when preparing for the final exam or working overtime, everyone likes to order drinks to buy salted chicken together and spend a long night with "eating".
However, now we have the exact research results. For many people who need to change their working hours or adjust the time difference, this discovery provides us with some application ideas-for example, we can avoid overeating when adjusting the time difference, adjust the disturbed biological clock as soon as possible, and prevent the occurrence of related diseases.