Today’s teen is busier than ever. With school, extracurriculars, homework, and more it is a rare moment that a modern high schooler is able to get an adequate amount of sleep. This lack of sleep is becoming an epidemic. Kids are falling asleep in class, cognitive ability is dropping, and memory is faltering.
As parents, teachers, and administrators it is a goal that children do their best and achieve all that they can achieve. This goal is only possible if circadian rhythm and chronotypes are taken into consideration.
This website is designed to give information to all the concerned adults that wish to help high school students succeed. Through this website, one should gain an appreciation for teenagers sleep-wake cycle and discover ways to balance and counteract the hectic cycle of teenage life.
The goal of this study was to see if using a 24 hour cycle of feeding could induce a change in the main biological clocks of rats by altering their peripheral tissues’ biological clocks. The scientists believed that there would be a significant change in the main biological clocks of the rats as it would be evolutionarily beneficial to be awake when food is available. The scientists measured core body temperatures of the rats at various times. They also measured the abundance of mRNA in cells upon the completion of the experiment by euthanizing the rats at various times of the feeding cycle.
The figure shows the core body temperature for the rats at various times of day, and thus various times of the feeding cycle. Following the line graph shows that the body temperature arose in anticipation of food and lowered when no food was expected. This trend allows us to add evidence to the hypothesis because an increase in body temperature at an atypical time for rats due to food indicates that the rats’ biological clocks have found a new rhythm that runs on a different schedule than the sun. The regular introduction of food showed that the liver and other organs are on a different biological clock than the rest of the body. The experiment also showed that given enough time, the main biological clock of a rat will change based on a food schedule. These findings could be extrapolated to people, and the necessity of a regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner for optimal daily performance. My question for the author of this study would be, have they attempted to do a study on people with a similar idea of study? For example, looking at how a person who eats on a regular schedule compares to a person who eats irregular times.
Sabath, E. (2014). Food entrains clock genes but not metabolic genes in the liver of suprachiasmatic nucleus lesioned rats. FEBS Letters, 588(17), 3104-3110. Retrieved September 30, 2014, from http://nw7pf8as2n.search.serialssolutions.com/?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rft_id=info:doi/10.1016/j.febslet.2014.06.045&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.aulast=Sabath&rft.aufirst=E.&rft.issn=00145793&rft.volume=588&rft.issue=17&rft.date=2014&rft.spage=3104&rft.epage=3110&rft.pages=3104-3110&rft.artnum=&rft.title=FEBS Letters&rft.atitle=Food entrains clock genes but not metabolic genes in the liver of suprachiasmatic nucleus lesioned rats&rfr_id=info:sid/Elsevier:Scopus
The goal of this study was to determine if the presence or absence of food had an effect on the circadian patterns of mammals. The scientists who conducted this study believed that there would be a mild effect on thee circadian patterns of the rats studied. Activity was measured to determine the circadian. The food anticipatory activity was the unit of measure and allowed the scientists to compare the various cohorts with one another.
In all these graphs, the x-axis is made of time while the y-axis is made of activity. These graphs show the change in circadian pattern due to food consumption only being allowed at odd times. The rats were withheld food until the middle of the day, as such the rats began to wake up during the day to eat. Eventually this began to change their circadian pattern causing them to switch over from nocturnal to diurnal effectively confirming the hypothesis that food intake alters circadian rhythm. It was found that food intake changes the release time and abundance of various hormones. This alteration includes melatonin. Essentially, the rats were more likely to wake up and stay awake with a regular morning meal and the rats were more likely to sleep longer if a meal was presented only sporadically or not at all.
I would like to ask the author of this study if there is any evidence that a lunchtime and evening meal have different effects on activity.
Mendoza, J. (2007), Circadian Clocks: Setting Time By Food. Journal of Neuroendocrinology, 19: 127–137. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2826.2006.01510.x
Staying in sync with the world.
