Circadian and Fasting Research

Today, thanks to advances in neurological and behavioral science, we know more about the brain than ever before. While your brain weighs in at just three-pounds, this organ is the most complex part of your body. The three sections of your brain, the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain, work separately and together to influence your entire body. Your brain controls your thinking, learning, remembering, speaking, seeing, hearing, emotions, sensing touch, balance, coordination, and more. Your brain continues to develop throughout your entire life, and influences from diet, sleep habits, exercise, and stress can help or hinder this process.

• Small but mighty: Consider that the human brain represents a mere two percent of a human’s body mass but uses a whopping 20 percent of your total energy budget each day.
• Strategies for best brain health: Incorporate a multidisciplinary approach that includes physical exercise, nutrition, sleep, mental fitness, and social interactions for your best brain health.
• Enhance mental functions with exercise: Physical activity can indirectly help brain health by enhancing just about every other function in your body.
• Nourish your noggin: The more high-quality foods you get, the more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants you and your brain get.
• Slumber to recover and repair your brain: Sleep is as important to your brain’s health and survival as are food and water.
• Strategies for better cognition over the lifespan: Research shows that mentally stimulating activities are linked to better brain function. Studies show that social engagement improves brain health.

Most of us already know to eat healthy, stay active, sleep seven to nine hours, and manage stress levels, but you probably don’t know that when you do these activities matters a great deal. Scientists are now discovering that your body relies heavily on the 24 hour day/night fluctuations we experience each day. Your body is a magnificent machine, and a complicated one that works best when all its parts work in harmony, like musicians in a symphony. Your body can’t function optimally if all its “instruments” play at one time.

However, when your body’s instruments perform in a complex but synchronized manner, the result is beautiful music. Your brain works like the conductor, and your body relies on receiving the correct instructions at the right time to carry out its many complex roles accordingly. If your parts flow, you thrive; if they don’t, your health suffers.

To synchronize your clocks and to get your brain back to peak performance requires a multidisciplinary approach that includes exercise, nutrition, sleep, and daytime habits, as well as mental health and social interactions. Thankfully, most of what’s required for a healthy brain is within your control. Here’s what you need to know:

Timing is important

When it comes to your brain, it’s all about timing, says an increasing number of scientists who study circadian rhythms. These biological clock-like devices are found in all cells and are most strongly governed by the information we receive from the natural 24-hour light/dark environment in which we live. Your brain has a master clock, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN. The SCN is located in your brain and receives direct input from the eyes. The input received by the SCN triggers a cascading effect that directs the rest of your body’s clocks. The problem today is that most of us no longer follow our biological timing systems—the SCN gets the wrong information, and therefore, so does your body—and the result is poor health in countless forms.

Your great-great-grandparents followed a natural “clock” set by each day’s sunrise and sunset. These distant relatives worked, were active, had meals, and socialized from dawn until dusk. Once it got dark, your ancestors rested and slept. In today’s modern world, we work, eat, live, and play at all hours of the day and night with little regard to the natural cycles of light and dark. This disregard for the natural environment throws our biological clocks out of sync. People who have out-of-sync circadian rhythms (your biological clocks) are more likely to struggle with excess weight, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, poor heart health, chronic pain, and many cancers compared to those who have synchronized clocks. Thankfully, there’s much you can do to get your body back in balance, including the following:

Exercise

Regular exercise is essential for keeping all your highest neural structures healthy. Physical activity relaxes your brain by increasing endorphins and reducing stress hormones, which reduces depression and anxiety. When you move your body, you increase circulation and oxygen, which improves cognition and clarity. Exercise also indirectly helps brain health by enhancing just about every other function in your body.

These improvements include your heart health, blood sugar levels, insulin sensitivity, weight management, mental health and mood, better digestion, stronger bones and muscles, and living longer in general. Aim to exercise for 30 to 45 minutes at a moderate activity most days of the week. If that seems overwhelming, begin with five to 10 minutes a day and gradually increase the amount.

Nutrition

Nutrition here stands for two things: Time-restricted eating (TRE) and a Mediterranean diet (it’s one of the healthiest). By eating all your meals within a 10-hour window each day (as you’ve been asked to do) is TRE, and you may have already noticed that you feel more clear-headed since you began this style of eating. What you might not know is that a growing body of research shows that TRE significantly and positively influences brain functioning.

Studies link the benefits of TRE to increases in brain function, sleep, energy, and metabolism, and decreases in stress, depression, obesity, overweight, heart disease, diabetes, and gut disturbance. You can boost this TRE response by getting more high-quality foods such as fresh vegetables and fruits (organic whenever possible), lean protein and fish, whole grains, legumes, healthy fats (think, extra virgin olive oil), and nuts and seeds.

With TRE, you don’t have to worry about following a strict diet or eating regimen. The keto diet (a high fat, moderate protein, and low carbohydrate diet) has been touted as a style of eating that improves brain functioning. The claim is that Keto-eating promotes ketone bodies (which are breakdown products of fat), which some say provide a more potent energy source for your brain and body. Ketones are an alternative energy source when the body is short on glucose.

However, research findings as to whether or not it truly provides better brain energy, especially long term, are still being investigated. Here’s the thing: Eating within an 8 to 10-hour window each day appears to promote ketone bodies without you having to live a bread-free existence. That means that you can keep eating whole grains, fresh fruit, and vegetables. You’ll naturally get the benefits of a keto-like diet while keeping your brain and body balanced, and you won’t need to live a bread-free existence.

Sleep and Stress

The adage, “I can sleep when I am dead,” should permanently be put to bed. Sleep is as vital to your brain’s health and survival, as are food and water. Lack of sleep reduces memory, increases fatigue, and damages reaction times, concentration, focus, and clarity. Sleep deficiency has also been linked to weight gain, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, your entire immune system, and other issues that affect brain health.

Sleep flushes out toxins, modulates stress, consolidates daytime experiences, preserves memory, organizes and stores information, and provides time to repair and replenish all your cells. While relaxing is good, it isn’t the same as sleep, especially when modulating stress. If you aren’t asleep, even if just reading a book, you are still connected (you can be disturbed by pings, tweets, rings from your phone, or other disturbances).

Sleep is a time when you literally take yourself “offline” and give yourself time to release the stress you build up during the day. If you can’t get all the benefits from sleep at night, then make it up with napping for 30 minutes at other times of the day.

Mind Games and Brain Health

Research shows that any mentally stimulating activity is linked to better brain function. This includes doing a daily crossword, working on a puzzle, or playing games with other actual people (think, Scrabble). These simple daily activities can stimulate brain health, as can memorizing a phone number or writing a letter by hand.

Social Interactions

Studies show that social engagement improves brain health by lowering stress, enhancing motivation and mood, enhancing heart health, and stimulating your brain better than isolation. Making new connections with people provides you with the opportunity to remember names and learn new information about people. One caveat: the benefits of social ties are influenced by the quality of the connection. Negative people and toxic relationships increase stress and hurt your brain—avoid them.

In a perfect world, you’d put all of the above practices into action every single day, but don’t beat yourself up if you fall short. Strive to accomplish as many healthy behaviors as you can, but keep in mind that doing any one of the above will help to keep you in balance. For example, on a day when you have no time for exercise, be sure to eat healthy and get enough sleep. Or, if you fall short on sleep, make sure to get out for a walk during the day. One healthy behavior is better than none.

• The immune system defined: Your immune system is mostly made of immune cells that perform a multitude of complex functions to act as your body’s security, surveillance, and defense system.
• Disease fighters in every cell: Inside all cells are immune response systems that work to detect harmful substances, infections, and abnormalities that can initially hide from immune cells.
• The body’s recycling center: Autophagy is the recycling center of the body. It breaks expired cells down into molecular building blocks and then uses the viable leftovers to make new cells.
• Immunity-boosting tips: A healthy immune system is able to discriminate, adapt, evolve, recycle, and respond efficiently and quickly. Healthy lifestyle strategies such as nutritious eating, exercise, mindfulness, and sleep will boost your immune system.

Every cell in your body is equipped with a 24/7 surveillance crew that constantly investigates your body’s environment for threats such as infections, disease, cell mutations, or irregular cell death. Your body comes with a sophisticated and complex immune system that continuously surveys your body to detect any harmful agents, including viruses, allergens, and toxins, and much more. As a whole, your immunity uses enormous resources and produces a large number of cells that are dedicated to identifying and defending your body from all sorts of dangers. Most of adult immune cells are produced by your bone marrow, but inside every single one of your trillions of cells are immune response systems that work to detect harmful substances, infections, and abnormalities that can initially hide from immune cells. If a cell’s immune receptors detect a threat, they trigger an alarm that signals your immune cells to release cellular compounds designed to attack, defend, repair, and/or eliminate a destructive or mutated cell.
Compromised immunity is more vulnerable to illness and disease. This can happen because of poor nutrition, depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, lack of exercise, exposure to toxins, and even due to a shortage of fun (yep, adults need to playtime too). Plus, compared to employees of a regular nine to five job, immunity is weakened in those who are shift workers, and in those who suffer from anxiety or depression. Body-wide chronic inflammation can result in these high-risk groups, which increases susceptibility for all illness and disease, including increased risks of asthma, acne, joint pain, colitis, respiratory problems, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer.
So, that’s the bad. The good is that there’s plenty to do to strengthen your immune response, beginning by knowing what a healthy immune system looks like.

A Healthy Immune System…
• Discriminates between harmful and harmless substances: It’s essential that your immune system be able to tell itself from foreign matter, as well as distinguish innocuous foreign substances from dangerous ones. Your disease-fighting cells can mistakenly attack something harmless, or your immune cells can overreact by continuing to attack an already-resolved illness or other threat (as if it doesn’t have an off switch).
• Adapts and Evolves to the Environment: This type of immunity (called acquired immunity) is critical when it comes to preventing cancer and infections. Thankfully, the human body has an extraordinary ability to renew itself. It does this by having an excellent memory. Your immune system stores information about past infections and illnesses, so it can react even faster if there’s a reoccurrence. This memory system is dispersed all through your body, via antibodies in your blood that travel everywhere circulation goes. These antibodies keep killer cells posted 24/7, where they remain on alert in areas of your body that were attacked previously.
• Recycles its old parts: When your immune system signals cell death because of an abnormality, the parts of the cell that are reusable are salvaged by your body (called autophagy). In contrast, the most dangerous and defective parts of the cell are removed as waste. Autophagy sorts the treasure from the trash by breaking cells down into their molecular building blocks and then using whatever leftovers are viable to make new cells.
• Must be a Rapid Responder: Your immunity is always open for business. Threats don’t take holidays, and infections and cell mutations can often divide more rapidly than healthy cells. Some abnormal cells develop to “hide” from your immune system. This unpredictability, rapid transformation, and deviance of abnormal cells make it critical for an optimal immune system that reacts quickly and efficiently.

How to Fortify Your Immunity
If your immune system is chronically weak or overwhelmed, it won’t be able to keep up with illness, disease, or environmental toxins. Thankfully, there are a lot of strategies you can incorporate to boost your immune system and protect yourself. Get started with the following strategies.
• Get Sleep: Boost the body’s defenses with seven to nine hours of nighttime sleep whenever possible. Modern lifestyles and your profession can endanger your ability to get enough slumber time. While sleep won’t always protect you from getting sick, lack of it will leave your immune system weakened and more vulnerable to illness and infection. When you are sleep-deprived, your body will produce more of the stress hormone cortisol, and your immunity suffers. If you must be up at night, for work or by personal choice, make up lost time and protect immune function by napping. This can be especially helpful during flu season when your immunity is already working overtime. You might even want to splurge on two siestas. According to the National Sleep Foundation, taking two naps, for a maximum of thirty minutes (one hour total), one in the a.m. and one in the p.m. offsets the harm sleep deprivation has on immunity.
• Practice Relaxation: Chronic stress is another cause of too much cortisol in the body, which can cause system-wide inflammation. In addition, stress decreases the white blood cells that fight off infections. It’s important to protect yourself by activating the relaxation response. A simple solution is to include five to 10 minutes of focused, slow breathing, or mindfulness meditation each day.
• Optimize Nutrition: Poor nutrition can increase the risk of illness and infections and can compromise your immune function. Protect yourself by choosing the best immunity-boosting foods rich in vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, and healthy fats. Avoid foods that cause inflammation and inhibit immune functioning. The most common inflammatory foods are refined grains and sugars, highly processed foods, red meats, and saturated fats. Instead of these artery-clogging fats, enjoy unsaturated versions that include raw nuts and seeds, avocados, and extra-virgin olive oil. Finally, go for a zero-sugar tolerance level. Refined sugars cause system-wide inflammation that can overwhelm and weaken your immune system.
• Exercise Frequently: Physical activity can help flush bacteria out of lungs and airways, it may kill harmful bacteria in the body, and exercise increases in antibodies in white blood cells that fight disease. Regular exercise also improves the regulation of stress hormones. While scientists still don’t have the full explanation behind the magical healing properties of exercise, research does find that regular exercisers have stronger immune systems than their slothful counterparts. Is it okay to exercise if you are sick? It depends. The rule of thumb typically states it’s okay to work out if symptoms are “above the neck.” That means it’s a go if you have a stuffy or runny nose, sneezing, or a minor sore throat. But, listen to your body. It’s a good idea to reduce the intensity and length of your workout (walk instead of run). Don’t exercise if you are fatigued, have a fever, a severe sore throat, or widespread muscle aches.
• Respect the Clock: Your immune system follows a clock that is designed to do certain tasks at certain times of the day. These include immune cells that survey the entire body to check for danger, receptors within cells that trigger an alarm and send a signal for help, cells that fight and kill illness and disease, and other components that repair, recycle, and clean up threats. There are many nuances to the immune circadian clocks that would take hundreds of pages to detail. What you need to know is that if you are eating within a 10-hour window each day (8 a.m. to 6 p.m., for example), then you are already strengthening your immunity. How? When you refrain from eating for 14 hours at night, you give your body the time and rest it needs to heal, repair, reinforce, and rejuvenate your immune system.