Scientists reveal how working night shifts interferes with appetite, hunger and food habits, sometimes resulting in weight gain. The disruption in the body’s biological clock, or circadian misalignment, brought about by working night shifts affects the hormones which regulating appetite, the team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, UK, said. Circadian misalignment is also commonly associated with the phenomenon of ‘jet-lag’.
The team focussed on the adrenal gland, situated near the kidney, which produces hormones that control many physiological functions including metabolism and appetite, called glucocorticoid hormones. A misalignment between light and dark cues led to a disturbance in the functioning of these hormones that then affected the appetite of the jet-lagged group of animals, driving an increased desire to eat significantly more during the inactive phase of the day, the scientists said in their study published in the journal Communications Biology.
They said that their findings reveal how circadian misalignment can profoundly alter food habits much to the detriment of metabolic health and that they could help the millions of people that work through the night and struggle with weight gain.
The glucocorticoid hormones in the adrenal glands directly regulate a group of brain peptides controlling appetitive behaviour, with some increasing appetite (orexigenic) and some decreasing appetite (anorexigenic).
A misalignment between light and dark cues led to a disturbance in the functioning of these hormones that then affected the appetite of the jet-lagged group of animals, driving an increased desire to eat significantly more during the inactive phase of the day, the scientists said in their study published in the journal Communications Biology.
They said that their findings reveal how circadian misalignment can profoundly alter food habits much to the detriment of metabolic health and that they could help the millions of people that work through the night and struggle with weight gain.
The glucocorticoid hormones in the adrenal glands directly regulate a group of brain peptides controlling appetitive behaviour, with some increasing appetite (orexigenic) and some decreasing appetite (anorexigenic). “For those who are working night shifts long-term, we recommend they try to maintain daylight exposure, cardiovascular exercise and mealtimes at regulated hours. “However, internal brain messages to drive increased appetite are difficult to override with ‘discipline’ or ‘routine’ so we are currently designing studies to assess rescue strategies and pharmacological intervention drugs,” said senior author Becky Conway-Campbell, Research Fellow at Bristol.
Source: PTI