The internal clock of your body, or the circadian rhythm, dictates a large part of your day. It tells you when you are hungry and need to snort some food when you are tired and should hit the hay, and more. That new watch also determines what time of day your body burns more calories, even when you're not doing anything, a new study shows.
The researchers who reported in Current Biology found that when we rested, we burned 10% more calories at the end of the afternoon and in the afternoon than in the morning. So, that means we do not have to worry about being lazy the next time we have a crash in the afternoon, right? Our bodies will rise for us.
The findings of this study reinforce the important role played by the circadian rhythm in the regulation of metabolism. They also explain why those who have irregular sleep schedules because they work on night shifts or other factors are more likely to gain weight.
To assess changes in metabolism throughout the day without the effects of activity level, dietary habits and sleep patterns, the researchers studied seven participants for more than a month in a laboratory that had no windows or clocks. Participants did not have access to phones or the Internet and were given schedules of when they could sleep, wake up and eat.
We know what you are thinking. No windows? No phones. Were they kidnapped? Calm down, we promise that they did it voluntarily.
Each night, the participants went to sleep four hours later than the night before. This imitated what a person would experience when traveling west through the entire world in a week.
"Because they did the equivalent of circling the globe every week, the internal clock of their body could not keep up," co-author Jeanne Duffy, of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham, said in a statement. and Women's Hospital in Boston... That left him in the hands of the body to maintain his own time without depending on the signals from the outside world. "This allowed us to measure the metabolic rate in all the different biological moments of the day."
The researchers found that participants burned the least amount of calories at rest at the end of the biological night when people experience a drop in body temperature. The energy expenditure was higher about 12 hours later, in the biological afternoon and at night.
The study itself was small, but the results help clarify how the circadian rhythm influences metabolism. In the future, researchers suggest that future studies examine whether these changes in resting metabolic rate contribute to weight gain among people who do not maintain regular sleep schedules. Until then, anyone trying to lose weight should maintain a normal schedule, which is important for overall health.
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