Sarah Chellappa, a neuroscientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and lead author on the recent Science Advances study explains a little about how this works on the cellular level: “Animal work suggests that such negative effects may be due to a misalignment between central and peripheral ‘clocks’ - natural body timekeepers that control physical and behavioral changes over the 24-hour cycle. While impaired glucose tolerance is not diabetes, people with this issue are at a much higher risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease than the general population. When someone has impaired glucose tolerance, the level of glucose (sugar) in their blood rises, but it doesn’t reach the threshold for diabetes, which is a chronic condition characterized by there being too much sugar in the blood and an inability to use glucose as fuel for the body. One of the consequences of eating when our body expects us to be asleep is impaired glucose tolerance - that means the body can’t process sugars correctly. So the middle of the night isn’t one of the times the body expects to refuel - that’s when we are supposed to be asleep. Humans are daytime creatures - we're not nocturnal, like owls. Essentially, circadian rhythm is like a clock that ticks in every cell in the body, and each cell’s clock’s timing is governed by a master clock in the brain, but they can also keep ticking without the brain getting too involved.Īn easy way to see this in action is to consider your daily diet: Our body expects to eat at certain times, and it sends out cues to prompt us to eat and fuel it back up. Our circadian rhythm is basically our body’s internal clock - but it’s a more fundamental part of our complex biology than you might imagine. The circadian rhythm is the body’s internal clock. These populations also tend to have worse health outcomes on average.īut a study recently published in Science Advances may be a way to mitigate some of the ill effects an out-of-whack circadian rhythm wreaks on the body.
Controlled human studies suggest “ circadian system and circadian misalignment have distinct influences on glucose tolerance, both separate from the behavioral cycle.” This biological reality intersects with demographics, like race, ethnic background, and class: People who work at night are more likely to have lower incomes and more likely to be from racial or ethnic minorities. Specifically, working nights are linked to higher instances of type 2 diabetes and obesity. It may also change your body’s metabolic health. Working nights can throw your sleep, diet, exercise, and social life out the window - after all, how do you get coffee with a friend if all your friends are asleep? But the graveyard shift doesn’t just force a lifestyle change.
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