If you eat, when you should be asleep, the enzymes contracted to work the night shift clock in for work, but they don’t do the work, so fat burning ceases.

We all have them, moments when we have zero energy and feel flat as a pancake.  In the healthy, these events are rare…………

The reason, your body carefully manages fuel supplies.  The secret to this balancing of your body’s energy supply and demand, involves using distinct teams of enzymes.  Day-to-day maintenance requires a team to store calories and a team to burn calories.

The work teams

The team of enzymes storing calories, is contracted to work in the day, while the team of enzymes tasked with burning calories, is required to work at night.  Officially, anyway.

The arrangement makes perfect sense.

Calories are most likely to be available during the day, since this is the time you’re out and about, “hunting & gathering” your calories.  Having the fat storing enzymes on standby, means any excess calories coming in, can quickly be stowed away for a rainy day.

On the other hand, the odds of calories arriving in the middle of the night, when you’re asleep, are quite low. So having a fat burning team on standby is imperative – they can reach into the cookie jar and keep the furnaces going, ensuring you’re adequately supplied with energy throughout the night.

Clock watching

Enzymes don’t come equipped with watches, they depend on your body’s clocks, to know when to clock in and out.

Each organ has it’s own clock….

• Which should be in sync with the body’s main clock, the master clock, located in the SCN region of the brain….
• Which should be in sync with the rhythms of the sun.

When all the clocks are ticking in time, your metabolism ticks over perfectly.  When clocks tick out of sync, a multitude of metabolic troubles arise.

Better body chemistry starts with…..

Clocking in the night shift

Since most of us have enough calories stored away to keep us going for a rather long time, the fat burning team, are the workers we most want to engage

Helping these guys show up for work ON TIME is relatively “EASY”.

Remember, they are contracted to WORK NIGHTS.

So, turning off the lights at night,  and sun gazing early in the day, gets them to show up for work.

But showing up is not enough.  They have to suit up and get on with the job inside each organ.

Organ clocks set the pace for this.

Body clocks tick on….

Up until now, it has not been clear, how individual organ clocks tell time, just that they do.

Now we know……

INSULIN winds the cogs of the liver’s clock.

Using an insulin inhibitor, S961, a team of Japanese researchers  were able to reset the liver clock of a group of mice, proving that insulin is the chief time keeper.

So what triggers insulin release ?

Feeding times matter

EATING.  High carb foods cause lots of insulin to be pumped out by the pancreas, but protein-rich foods also trigger its release.

So every time you eat, the liver clock resets.

On paper, this set up should ensure time synchronicity between the master clock and the liver clock, since  “hunting & gathering” is a daytime activity.

But…… if you eat when you should be sleeping, a time warp happens, your liver clock spins out of control.

The result…..

• NO FAT BURNING !  leading to extra pounds 
• And long-term, METABOLIC CHAOS – high cholesterol, high sugar, high blood pressure, high everything.

Synch your body clocks

To enjoy Better Body Chemistry and win the battle of the bulge, you need all your clocks to be ticking along perfectly.

Don’t eat when you should be asleep. And of course, go to sleep.

Further reading

Sleeping in means fattening up	It is time to co-ordinate your diary with your body’s schedule	Are your snacking habits hitting the snooze button on the brain alarm clock ?

Interested in learning more about the chemistry behind those extra fat layers ?

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