The biological clock does not lie. Not even when – according to its timely production of hormones – we should sit at the table. And so, if you live in constant social jet lag, that is, in a perpetual misalignment between circadian rhythms and daily behaviors, both the belly and the mind will have to pay the bill.
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Shift work
“The classic and most studied example is that of night workers and shift workers, who have to work all night or juggle shifts that go from sunrise to sunset, eating and sleeping when they can and often without maintaining stable schedules” he explains. Gianluca Castelnuovo, professor of Clinical Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan and researcher in eating disorders, obesity and food addiction at the Italian Auxological Institute. “Those with disrupted circadian rhythms run a greater risk of developing depression and anxiety, overweight and obesity.”
The reason has to do with the biological clock. “It stimulates the production of certain hormones based on light or dark, so in the daytime the body is predisposed to carry out certain activities, in the nocturnal ones to rest” continues the expert. “If the opposite happens, you find yourself fighting against a body that does not want to stay awake and to do so you mainly use stimulating drinks or a lot of caffeine. But the body does not absorb nutrients and substances at night in the same way it would during the hours. diurnal, because the metabolism follows different phases due to the different hormone levels.
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Just to give two examples, the concentration of melatonin, the most concentrated sleep hormone at night, and that of cortisol, a hormone involved in the metabolic processes of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins, which instead is higher during the day and lower during the hours, varies. nocturnal. The recurrence of this chronobiological phase shift can cause weight gain and negatively affect the balance of endocrine-metabolic values and therefore mood. Not to mention the difficulty in trying to sleep when the world is active outside, or the frustration of eating alone, perhaps quickly and in an uncomfortable nocturnal context “.
Meal times and mood
A team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, wondered if, just as mealtimes can negatively affect mood, it can also positively. In a nutshell: can planning precise meal times become a therapy for treating mood disorders such as depression and anxiety?
To understand this, the researchers carried out an experiment on 19 people (12 men and 7 women) and by simulating night shifts they divided them into two groups. The first ate meals only during the day, the second both during the day and at night. From the results, the experts found that the greater the circadian misalignment, the greater the association with mood disturbances during night work.
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“Our findings provide evidence for the timing of food intake as a new strategy to minimize mood vulnerability in individuals suffering from circadian misalignment, such as people engaged in shift work or suffering from jet lag.” wrote the authors of the study, published in September in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Depression and anxiety would have increased respectively by 26 and 16% in the group of diurnal and nocturnal eaters, but much less in diurnal only, probably because, Castelnuovo resumes, “eating only during the day in alignment with the biological clock means enjoying the maximum benefits of food and its nutrients, respecting the natural rhythms of the body ?.
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A vicious or virtuous circle
The study confirms that sleep-diet-mood is a cardinal link for our well-being. A circle that can become a virtuous, but equally vicious. “Like sleep, nutrition is also closely linked to the biological clock and our mental health. Their relationship is very delicate and there are some situations that can put it in crisis, such as the one analyzed in the study. The important thing is to understand what is the first piece to yield, otherwise it can become complex to identify cause and consequence “.
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The scenarios can be different: a busted rest time that creates depression and therefore you eat more to compensate; a job that creates anxiety and therefore sleeps and eats poorly; or even a job that forces you to eat at unlikely times, sleep little and this generates anxiety and depression.
“Therapy can start from one of the three elements – sleep, diet or mood – and then work on all three fronts. There are structures that take care of the patient with multidisciplinary teams, otherwise, depending on the problem, we can refer to a sleep medicine expert, a psychologist or a nutritionist “.
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