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Mice On Night Binges

by sheila ashwood for wlr

Sounds like a good subject for a cartoon, but research is showing more good reason for not feeding our bodies excess fats.

The report from Cell Metabolism Journal reports Professor Joe Bass, lead scientist from Northwestern University made the discovery after studying mice fed on high-fat foods. After only two weeks they showed interference with their internal clocks, causing them to eat extra food when they should be asleep. Likened to a human raiding the fridge in the middle of the night to binge on junk food.

What have mice to do with humans?

Our homology, which is a common ancestry of two or more genes, is the same in all mammals, including human beings.

Research into our internal clocks (circadian clock programming¹) shows this has direct impact on energy metabolism, representing mechanisms underlying health epidemics of obesity and diabetes. A high-fat diet increases the likelihood of obesity because the body’s metabolism is disrupted and eating patterns become irregular.

Although still in its infancy, research is providing a framework that potentially has great importance in understanding health and disease, the circadian clock system plays a fundamental role in energy metabolism.

¹Circadian - from Latin circa meaning around and diem meaning day it is a roughly 24 hour cycle on the physiological process of living beings, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria, (blue-green algae, oxygen providers).

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