Circadian rhythms: Feeding patterns and Alzheimer’s disease

     Eat. Sleep. Eat. Sleep. This is a pattern which all humans follow, we must eat to give our bodies the nutrients and energy to thrive and we must sleep to allow the body time to rest and recover. Our ancient ancestors followed the sun and developed internal mechanisms which we now understand to be circadian rhythms. These circadian rhythms command our bodies clock in terms of daily patterns of waking up, eating, and sleeping and are intrinsically connected to light-dark cycles. Yet the modern human being doesn’t follow the patterns of our ancestors, we stay up late into the night, we eat giant meals after being out for a night of drinking, we stare at our phone screens, and we consistently shift our sleep schedule. Researcher Dr. Fred Turek focuses on this in his work on circadian rhythms and its effect on our functions. 

The Turek lab research has illustrated that humans, along with many organisms, follow a 24-hour clock. They were able to disrupt this internal clock and apply it to various disease models and experiments. An example of this was a very interesting project that examined the impact of feeding time with obesity in a mouse model. Their research found that feeding animals at the incorrect time led to animals gaining significantly more weight than right time eating animals, even if they ate the same amount of food and exercised the same. This indicated the importance of eating time on metabolism. 

    Interestingly, Alzheimer’s patients exhibit a cycle like pattern of behavior with many having altered sleep rhythms. The article “Intermittent Fasting Improves Alzheimer’s Pathology” by Miles Martin of the UC San Diego Today highlighted recent findings which connected the circadian rhythm disruptions in Alzheimer's disease to feeding cycles. They found that Alzheimer's model mice that were fed on a restricted schedule diet had a reduction in memory loss during behavioral testing and in amyloid plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. This connection between feeding and disease pathology illustrates the importance of our internal clock. 

    The field of circadian rhythm research has been shown to be incredibly important in human function and disease pathology. Furthermore, continued research is needed to better understand its therapeutic value yet individuals should consider daily habits and schedule important for human well being.