Follow Proper Meal Timings to Avoid Metabolic Diseases

Following proper meal timings affects the level of triglycerides in liver and also protects one from other liver problems, says a finding. Few lipids, such as triglycerides (TAG), follow a certain time clock known as circadian rhythm where its levels reach its height about eight hours after sunrise. Just on this line, certain biological processes in our body follow a time pattern and improper food timings can affect these processes due to disruption in the time cycle, creating an imbalance in the body.

These imbalances can lead to diseases such as obesity, metabolic syndrome and fatty liver. With many offices following night-shifts, people working in these shifts exhibit many cases of such diseases. According to the study, time at which TAG accumulates and its levels are determined by the clocks and timing of meals. Hyperlipidemia and hypertriglyceridemia are common diseases which is abnormally high levels of lipids in blood and liver cells. This causes fatty liver and other metabolic diseases.

Scientists used mouse to study the importance of circadian rhythm in the accumulation of lipids in liver. They found that triglycerides or TAG which follow a time table fluctuated even in mice which do not have a functional biological clock.

Thus the study, which was published in journal Cell Metabolism, said the highest level of the lipid reached 12 hours later than the natural schedule and the reason for this was attributed to food.

“These results came as a complete surprise. One would expect that if the inherent clock mechanism is ‘dead,’ TAG could not accumulate in a time-dependent fashion,” said postdoctoral fellow Yaarit Adamovich, who performed the study along with the team in the lab of Dr Gad Asher of the Weizmann Institute’s Biological Chemistry Department, together with scientists from Dr Xianlin Han’s lab in the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Orlando, US.

Source-Medindia