The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight: Longevity Book

by Satchin Panda PhD

Overview

When we eat may be as important as what we eat. Discover how to align your lifestyle with your body’s natural clock for better overall health—from an award-winning circadian rhythm and aging researcher.

“A complete program to recalibrate your day/night activities, optimize sleep, lose weight, learn/work, and exercise.”—Valter Longo, PhD, internationally bestselling author of The Longevity Diet

Most people typically wake up, get hungry for meals, and doze off in bed around the same time every day. But if you’ve ever experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter, you know that this schedule can easily be thrown off kilter. For some people, that imbalance—difficulty sleeping at night, hunger at odd times, or sudden fatigue at noon—is a constant. Dr. Satchin Panda, one of the leading researchers on circadian rhythms, has a plan to reset your body clock.

Beginning with an in-depth explanation of the circadian clock—why it’s important, how it works, and how to know it isn’t working—The Circadian Code outlines lifestyle changes to make to get back on track. It’s a concrete plan to enhance weight loss, improve sleep, optimize exercise, and manage technology so that it doesn’t interfere with your body’s natural rhythm. Dr. Panda’s life-changing methods show you the keys to avoiding and alleviating chronic ailments like diabetes, cancer, and dementia, as well as digestive conditions like acid reflux, heartburn, and irritable bowel disease.

In short, knowing your circadian code might just be the secret to turning back the clock and slowing down the aging process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593135907
Publisher:	Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
Publication date:	02/11/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Dr. Satchin Panda is a leading expert in the field of circadian rhythm research. He is a Professor at the Salk Institute and a, founding executive member of the Center for Circadian Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Panda is a Pew Scholar and a recipient of the The Julie Martin Mid-Career Award in Aging Research.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

We Are All Shift Workers

If you are a card-carrying shift worker who wakes up in the middle of the night to go to work, returns from work late at night, or stays awake all night, you know how it feels to be living against a primitive, primordial drive to sleep at night and stay awake during the day. But even if you’re not, I’m sure you can remember a time when you were fighting against your internal clock. The truth is, we are all shift workers. There are times in life when we go through chronic sleep disruption, and for many, those habits linger. If you pull an all-nighter at school or work, stay up late studying for a test, have a bad night’s sleep, travel across several time zones, stay awake late into the night to tend to a sick relative, or wake up a few times to feed and change a baby, then you too are a shift worker. A full-time job with long commutes combined with a regular home routine is like working two shifts and going to bed past midnight. Even one late night of partying can be just as disruptive as traveling from one time zone to another: That’s why we call it social jet lag.

The statement that “we are all shift workers” isn’t just an idea. Data points to this fact. For example, Professor Till Roenneberg, a researcher in Munich, surveyed more than 50,000 people in Europe and the United States and found that the majority of people either go to bed after midnight or wake up early with insufficient sleep. Similarly, people also follow different bedtime schedules on weekdays and weekends. At the 2017 World Sleep Congress, Roenneberg presented his data showing that roughly 87 percent of adults have social jet lag and go to bed at least 2 hours later on the weekend.

About 6 years ago, my lab started monitoring the activity and sleep patterns of close to 200 college students, and we found the same pattern that Roenneberg has reported. So far, there’s been only one person in the whole group who actually went to bed every day at the same time, within half an hour, including on weekends. There has been only one other student who went to bed before midnight for at least two days in a week.

We also monitor pregnant women and working moms with babies, and their patterns are also very erratic. In fact, their patterns are most similar to firefighters, who expect to be awoken a few times every night. For many women, the hardest part of motherhood is working against your clock to stay awake at night and trying to catch up on sleep at odd hours of the day. The only time new moms actually got good sleep, not surprisingly, was when they had some help beyond their spouse/partner, like in-laws or parents who could share some of the work at night.

Working mothers have the roughest time syncing their lives to a daily rhythm because their day is affected by everyone else in the home. Typically, working mothers wake up very early to get breakfast ready for the family, prepare the kids, pack the lunch bags and backpacks, get the kids to school or day care, and then get themselves to work. After dinner, they oversee homework, exercise, or work at home late into the night. As the week goes on, their circadian disruption becomes more severe. For instance, when my daughter was an infant, by Friday my wife would literally fall ill, and it would take her all weekend to recover.

No matter what the cause, we all know how it feels the day after a particularly rough night. You feel sleepy, yet you cannot sleep. Your stomach may feel upset, your muscles are weak, your mind is foggy, and you are certainly not in the mood to hit the gym. It’s as if your body and mind are confused—half of your brain may be telling you that it is time to catch up on lost sleep, but the other half is insisting that it’s daytime and you should not sleep. You may resolve to push on and reach for a strong cup of coffee or energy drink to stamp out the urge to sleep or try to get back into your regular routine as quickly as possible.

A brain on shift work cannot make rational decisions. According to a recent article in Popular Science magazine, a single night shift has cognitive effects that can last a week. These lapses in memory or attention can also make us vulnerable to bad habits. A few days of reduced sleep can change our appetite, both for the kinds of foods we crave and how much we want to eat when we stay awake at night. Often, we are prone to eat more calorie-dense junk food late at night when our stomach is meant to rest and repair.

Living in the shift-work zone can also cause difficulty in getting to sleep. Some turn to alcohol or sleeping pills, both of which can trigger depression. But more important, they are addictive remedies that create bad habits that continue even when our lifestyle does not demand us to be awake at night.

And if it weren’t bad enough that a shift-work lifestyle affects the way we feel the next day, our family members are in essence secondhand shift workers, as we may inadvertently disrupt their sleep as they wake up early or stay awake late to match our crazy schedules and keep us company. The effects on their health are equally troubling. For instance, in a 2013 analysis of published papers on the topic, researchers found that children of shift workers not only had more cognitive and behavioral problems as compared to children raised by non–shift workers, they also had a higher incidence of obesity.

While a day or two of staying awake late into the night, or a couple of days after traveling through a few time zones, may be uncomfortable, repeatedly disrupting your circadian clock can have adverse health consequences, as every system in your body starts to malfunction. It makes the immune system so weak that germs and bugs that don’t usually cause any trouble can upset your stomach or even cause flulike symptoms. It has been well documented that shift workers experience more health problems than non–shift workers, particularly gastrointestinal diseases, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Surprisingly, the number one cause of death and work disability for active-duty firefighters is not fire or accident—it is heart disease, which is now thought to be linked to a disruption of the circadian rhythm. In many studies, shift work increases the risk for certain types of cancer to such an extent that, in 2007, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified shift work as a potential carcinogen.

If we are all shift workers, then we will all suffer. This is why we have to understand how our circadian clock works, and how to optimize our lifestyle to nurture the natural rhythm of the body.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Part I The Circadian Clock 1

Chapter 1 We Are All Shift Workers 3

Chapter 2 How Circadian Rhythms Work: Timing Is Everything 23

Chapter 3 Track and Test: Is Your Circadian Code in Sync? 44

Part II The Circadian Lifestyle 67

Chapter 4 A Circadian Code for the Best Night's Sleep 69

Chapter 5 Time-Restricted Eating: Set Your Clock for Weight Loss 94

Chapter 6 Optimizing Learning and Working 121

Chapter 7 Syncing Your Exercise to Your Circadian Code 138

Chapter 8 Adapting to the Ultimate Disrupters: Lights and Screens 155

Part III Optimizing Circadian Health 171

Chapter 9 The Clock, the Microbiome, and Digestive Concerns 173

Chapter 10 The Circadian Code for Addressing Metabolic Syndrome: Obesity, Diabetes, and Heart Disease 190

Chapter 11 Enhancing the Immune System and Treating Cancer 204

Chapter 12 The Circadian Code for Optimizing Brain Health 221

Chapter 13 A Perfect Circadian Day 236

Acknowledgments 239

Notes 243

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

When you get in sync with your body’s instinctive circadian rhythm, everything you do feels easier. Losing weight, having more energy, and sleeping well just happen naturally. Read Satchin Panda’s book to take advantage of this brand new science. It works, and I use it!”—Dave Asprey, New York Times bestselling author of The Bulletproof Diet and Head Strong

“One of the essential factors to ensure longevity is to align your life with your body’s circadian rhythms. The Circadian Code, written by one of the world’s leading experts on circadian rhythms, offers a complete program to recalibrate your day/night activities, optimize sleep, lose weight, learn/work, and exercise.”—Valter Longo, PhD, internationally bestselling author of The Longevity Diet

“A very readable and enjoyable introduction to what is a major topic in the circadian field: paying attention to your circadian clock, what one might call 'circadian hygiene,' including the benefits of time-restricted eating.”—Michael Rosbash, Nobel Laureate (Physiology and Medicine), Peter Gruber Professor of Neuroscience Brandeis University/HHMI

“The Circadian Code offers some of the most powerful insights on health available today, written in a riveting and easily accessible style.  By bringing to light the latest research on circadian rhythms, Dr. Panda gives us the gift of understanding how we can access the wisdom of the body, easily support healthy circadian rhythms, and, in the process, prevent or reverse disease, more easily manage weight, and feel well rested and renewed every day. I’ve spent decades working in high tech, and have studied the impacts of technology on our health. The Circadian Code offers practical advice for vitality and health in our modern, technology saturated world.”—Linda Stone, Former Apple and Microsoft executive

“I found Satchin Panda’s research inspiring when I wrote The Fast Diet. I'm fascinated by the work his team has done on time restricted eating because it gets results and is based on real science.”—Michael Mosley, New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Diet
 
“In recent years, we’ve learned so much about the primacy of circadian rhythm. Satchin Panda, one of the field’s most influential scientists, takes us from the knowledge base to practical impact in our day to day lifestyle in The Circadian Code.”—Eric Topol, MD, author of The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands

“Satchin Panda’s research is an integral part of my 4 Pillar Plan. The Circadian Code explains the crucial ‘when’ aspect of healthy living. You’ll learn the best times to eat, exercise, work, and sleep, and if you follow his instructions, your whole family will benefit. I highly recommend this program.”—Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, author of The 4 Pillar Plan and How to Make Disease Disappear
 
“The beauty of Satchin Panda’s philosophy of time-restricted eating is its simplicity. It is an elegant lifestyle intervention everyone should arm themselves with. The message? When you eat can be almost as important as what you eat.”—Rhonda Patrick, podcast host for Found My Fitness

From the Publisher