Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #22 Why When We Eat Matters with Professor Satchin Panda PART 2

Episode Date: June 15, 2018

Dr Chatterjee talks to Professor Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute in California, a leading expert in the field of circadian rhythm and whose research is transforming everyday lives worldwide. Show notes for part 2 available at drchatterjee.com/panda Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and television presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. So today's episode of the podcast is actually the second part of a two-part

conversation with the one and only Professor Sachin Panda. Guys, if you've not heard last week's episode, I'd highly encourage you to check it out first. You can find it at my website, drchatty.com forward slash TRF, or if you go to whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on, just go back into it, look for Feel Better Live More, and look for last week's episodes. Guys, it was an incredible conversation last week. I've had such amazing feedback on social media all throughout the week, where Sachin explains why when you eat might be as important as what you eat. Professor Panda is one of the world's leading experts in the field of circadian rhythm research. He's also the author of the brand new book, The Circadian Code.

Now in today's conversation, we go a little bit deeper and Sachin talks to me about how when we sleep and the quality of our sleep can help reduce our risk of disease. He also shares his many tips for travel, particularly when we're crossing time zones. And he talks about a rather unusual recommendation, which is to wait for one hour after waking before eating or drinking anything. He also covers one of my favourite topics, caffeine. Now we pick up the conversation with Sachin telling me about his smartphone app, My Circadian Clock, and how he and his team are using this as a brand new way of collecting scientific data from people all over the world,

and how this could revolutionize clinical research. No, I mean, this is the way where the modern clinical studies should go, because what we realized is another thing, that most of the clinical control clinical studies should go because what we realized is another thing, that most of the clinical control clinical studies are done in maybe 20 or 30 or maybe 50 very reputable clinical centers throughout the world. And all these studies are done on people who live within 20 to 30 or maybe maximum 50 kilometers from the clinical center. So then what you practice as physician or what we usually tell people is based on a very small number of people who live within very small very close distance from these clinical centers and if you think about if you think about it we certainly

in the uk you know we know that socioeconomic groups change depending on you know where you are for example so you know in some cities for example it's right in the center of the city it's lower socioeconomic groups and as people go out to the suburbs it's more affluent socioeconomic you know more yeah more more more affluent areas and so that will obviously skew which population you're pulling in that's yeah that's super interesting yeah so that's one reason we thought in this way we can actually get very representative samples and we will know what kind of challenges people have in their work so for example nearly nearly all clinical studies exclude people who do shift work whereas now we can collect data from people who do day and night shift, 24-hour shift,

emergency workers, and we can see what kind of challenges they have in adopting, say, 10 hours time restricted eating or 12 hours and what they can do. The second thing why I'm very excited about this way of doing research is when I go to do a research, do a study in my mouse room, I cannot ask the mouse, how is he feeling? Whereas humans, they give us feedback. For example, this idea that time-restricted eating improves sleep. We have done maybe dozens of mice. We have put dozens of mice in time-restricted eating but they never told us that they were sleeping better but it's only the humans who came back and told

us and then now we are going back and asking why is that happening similarly acid reflux we never thought because mice also don't tell us so this is another reason why when somebody downloads the app and then finds some benefits after time-restricted eating, and in the app there is a feedback feature, they can just write a sentence saying, well, I have this condition and this is helping me. Then we take that information and come back, go back and see, what is the scientific basis?

And this gives us new ideas, new hypotheses to go back and do basic science research. That is incredible. So you're learning from the feedback and that feedback, you're now going back into the lab to try and figure out why that might have happened. Which actually, if you think about it, that's what any good clinician or researcher should really do as well. Actually, if you think about it, that's what any good clinician or researcher should really do as well. If you think about it, you know, I remember maybe five, ten years ago as a doctor, hearing stories from patients that, oh, when I do this, I get better. And I think, well, that's interesting. I've not really learnt about that.

And you keep hearing the story, you go, that's interesting. I want to find out why that intervention is working for those patients. Rather than saying, oh, that's rubbish, you shouldn't be doing that it's like well you're telling me that's working i now need to figure out why is that working so i can see why the app would be so beneficial now that's the most fascinating part of uh doing this uh research this way we are learning a lot of stuff um so actually that prompted me to go back and ask, because we found people with various conditions, for example, people who had depression, bipolar disorders, or anxiety, even night eating syndrome, arrhythmia, cardiac arrhythmia, they all came back.

And we would hear one or two stories like this. And then this is kind of the background noise level. And then when we hear the same thing happening in half a dozen or a dozen different people then we go back and the first thing we do is we read the literature is it reported that people who do chronic shift work are they predisposed to this kind of disease or is there a animal model where if you put the animals in disturbed condition, does it happen? Or animals or humans who have a mutation in circadian rhythm gene, does it happen? So when you put this together, what we're finding is there are nearly 110 different disease conditions which may arise from circadian disruption.

Or conversely, there are nearly more than 100 diseases where just taking care of your daily rhythms by paying attention to when people eat or when people sleep, how much they sleep, will substantially, significantly reduce the disease risk and disease burden. Well, Sachin, let's sort of dive into that if we can. that if we can this is this is yeah you know you're basically saying that many of the diseases that are now afflicting people are the complaints are in some way reflected to their circadian rhythm or whether they're living in harmony with that or not so what are some of those things are people listening and going to go yeah that's okay great what can i do so you're saying a time restricted window do we know if it's better to eat early and finish early or um you know eat breakfast late and finish late i mean i certainly know what i think on that but i just wonder do you do we know yet uh which is better yeah so it's it all goes back to people's lifestyle

so for example some people they go to bed very late because of the work or because of the family issues they have. And then they also wake up very late in the morning, say 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. And for them, we cannot come back with a simple universal rule that one should eat breakfast at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. a.m. So what I feel is maybe after you wake up, give yourself at least an hour before you have your first cup of tea or coffee or breakfast. That is also another reason why that is important is as we wake up, sometimes we wake up to an alarm clock. So although our body or brain wakes up, So although our body, our brain wakes up, many of our hormones that keep us asleep, they haven't gone back to the state where we should be awake. Very simple example is melatonin.

Melatonin levels rise throughout the night, and that helps us to stay in sleep. And when we wake up in response to an alarm clock, we wake up, but then the melatonin hormone doesn't listen to that alarm clock. It is still high. And it takes another hour or so to come back to baseline, to low level. And when we eat that first bite, when the melatonin level is pretty high, then just like melatonin makes our brain to sleep, it also makes our pancreas to sleep. So that means in response to that breakfast, our body may not produce enough insulin to take care of it, to process that food. So wait an hour before having anything is one sort of take-home tip for people? Wait at least an hour. And some people, they don't feel hungry.

They might have had a big meal last night. So at least one hour is a good rule. And then you can start counting your 10-hour window. So if somebody is waking up at 8 o'clock and having breakfast at 9 o'clock, then 10 hours will bring him or her to 7 p.m. at night in the evening for last bite. And the reason why we say 10 hours is a good target is sometimes things happen. It may be delayed. You may be stuck in traffic or you may have to come home and prepare food.

So even if you go to 11 hours, you are not booted off this island of time-restricted feeding. But I think you said earlier on that really anywhere between 8 and 12 hours, we know you're going to get a lot of the benefits. Yeah. So there are some differences that we find in mice. Of course, we haven't done the experiments as rigorously in humans. So what we find is when mice eat between 8 to 10 hours, within that 8 to 10 hours window, then they have a tremendous benefit on their

endurance. So their muscle function is much better. They can outrun mice that eat healthy diet any time. They will stay on a treadmill for more than two hours. But if they eat somewhere between 11 to 12 hours, then all the other health benefits are there, but it slightly reduces their endurance benefit. And we don't understand why. So now they will stay on the treadmill maybe an hour, hour and a half. And why this is important is as we get older, our muscle performance weakens, but at the same time, our heart is also full of muscle.

So our cardiac arrhythmia slightly goes up as we age. So what we found in mice and also in Drosophila fruit flies is when they have a certain time interval, then that cardiac arrhythmia is reduced and they can have high endurance so some people who want to improve their cardiac performance or endurance then they may suit for 10 hours or something and then self-experiment a little bit to see whether that suits them and they may stay between 8 to ten hours and for people for other people who find it much easier to stick to 10 to 12 then 10 to 12 is better for them do we know how low you can go i mean i know many people listen will be wondering well you know because i i know when i lecture about your research people always say yeah but what happens if i do six hours or what happens if i eat for four hours?

Do we know anything about that? Well, unfortunately, we cannot do this kind of research in mice for a long period of time because when you reduce our time interval, then mice also eat less. So we get the double benefit of caloric restriction and time restriction. And from scientific studies point of view and academics, we need to differentiate that. We also don't know the very long-term effect of this caloric restriction on circadian rhythm. But at least the mouse experiments, on the other hand,

have given us the clue somewhat indirectly. And let me kind of take a couple of minutes to explain this. There are a lot of caloric restriction studies in literature, very well done from many different labs from all over the world where mice are given 70% of calories, 70% calories of what they usually need in a day. And this calorie is, this food is given at a certain time of the day, maybe at 10 o'clock in the morning or sometimes at 5 in the evening. And we know that the caloric-restricted mice live longer than mice that eat their normal diet at libido.

So that has led to this idea that caloric restriction increases longevity, improves health from many, many numerous studies. One simple thing that many caloric restriction studies did not pay attention to is when do these mice eat their food? And now what is becoming very clear is all the CR studies, caloric restriction studies, also involve time restriction. That means these mice eat all their food within four to six hours. So that means these four hours time restriction or six hours time restriction kind of studies have already been done in mice.

And those studies have shown that the mice eat slightly less and they live longer and they have many other health benefits. But having said that, I cannot just go and tell people they should eat between four and six hours. The reason being, I see time-restricted feeding or time-restricted eating as a public health or a solution to many of the disease or as a family solution to being in sync. So when I say 10 hours or 12 hours time-restricted eating,

I feel that everyone from a 5- to 8-year-old to 80-year-old living in the same house can follow the practice. And when the eating time is synchronized it also brings back family time together and this is kind of a way of life that's way beyond trying to improve your personal health it's a family health it's a community i love that i love that i mean that is it's such a it's a it's a simple it's one thing that you change and it has so many knock on benefits, doesn't it? For the whole family, as you say, you know, sitting around a table eating together. And again, we know that has many benefits, not only for physical health in terms of how and how much you eat, but also in terms of social health and emotional health.

and actually on the on the very first bbc uh documentary that i i ever was involved with um a program called doctor in the house which first this first episode aired in in 2015 and um i think you can still see it on youtube actually on my youtube channel it's still there but it's we use time restricted feeding i think it was either 10 or 11 hours but it was interesting they would all they put up the times on their fridge. Yeah. And they would sit around and they'd end up eating all their dinners together because it was a family thing. We were all doing it together. You know, it's not that I'm doing my time, which it's feeling and you're doing yours. The family, the mom, the dad, the daughter, they all did it together. And that's obviously when you were talking about public health changes, it's very hard to make behavior change in isolation.

It's much easier when it's everyone around you is doing the same thing as well, right? Yeah. So that's why I think we are always thinking about a simple behavior change that will have multiple effects, domino effect. And I think this time-restricted eating is one that simple behavior change that will have both benefits for social health, family, bringing the family together, bringing family health to forefront, all of this together. And the way I compare time-restricted eating of 10 hours to 12 hours to other practices

that we do on a daily basis, it's almost like brushing your teeth to take care of your teeth, dental health. And we do it every day. We don't even think about whether there is a cheat day. Can I cheat on brushing my teeth? Well, you can cheat, but it's not a pleasant experience. But at the same time, once in a while, we go to the dentist because we need a deep cleansing, deep cleaning. So similarly, maybe once in a while, somebody can go back to say six hours or eight hours time restricting for a few weeks, a couple of weeks or four to six weeks,

but then we'll come back to say 10 to 12 hours time restricting for the rest of the time in the year. Yeah, Sachin, you know what I find incredible about this? You're at a cutting edge research institute. You are one of the world's most cutting edge scientists at the moment in terms of what work you're doing. Thank you. that different organs have different times and we need to optimize our lifestyle to suit what our organs are doing traditional indian medicine ayurvedic medicine has also talked about these these things and i find it incredible now how we're getting modern cutting-edge science to

almost echo what i think a lot of humans may well have known for a long period of time yeah so i think if you think about it, humans are a very creative bunch and we have lived on this planet for more than 100,000 years. So we have made those observations on a daily basis. We have figured out that when we eat, it does have a huge impact.

We have figured out that our daily rhythms, our organs have daily rhythms. So I'm not surprised that there is a lot of traditional wisdom behind it. And what modern science is helping us is to put the foundation to have a deeper understanding into it so that we can not only combine it with say lifestyle we can also combine it with medication surgery or what time we should be taking our flu vaccine all of this can be now integrated to that framework yeah and you mentioned you know once in a while like we never really forget to brush our teeth and once in a while we'll go to the dentist you know i remember i think my mum when i was growing up you know once a week or i think it was once a week she would fast you know

almost you know again i'm not saying that people need to do this i just find it interesting how a lot of these concepts have been there culturally in in certain and you know in certain places around the world um it's actually i find this so fascinating this area i can't even tell you um a few things i just want to quickly fire through if we can caffeine you mentioned you know wait an hour yeah this is a big question of everyone because you know everyone likes their morning cup of coffee or certainly the uk cup of tea um what's the deal there when you say time restricted eating window do you mean fluids as well and do you mean caffeine yeah so time restricting window includes all food and i always tell people to to limit their coffee to that

window for most regular people uh coffee and tea so there are two reasons one is as soon as you wake up if you need coffee to really get out of your bed, that's a warning sign that you are not getting enough sleep. So if you really need that coffee to open your eyes, then maybe you have to try to go to bed a little early to reduce that urge. Second is if you really have to have that coffee or tea, then you can try without milk and sugar because at least that will reduce the chance of your pancreas waking up because that's when your insulin response is pretty low because your melatonin may be still high. So a black tea or a black coffee is okay outside the eating window for some people,

but it's when you add sugar and milk and cream and that sort of thing. Particularly in the morning. And then what I say is usually our body clears half of the caffeine within six to seven hours. So that means even if we had coffee at noon, then half of that caffeine is still in our system by six or seven p.m. And half of that caffeine is still in our system by 6 or 7 p.m. So that's the reason why some people cannot go to sleep if they have coffee or tea in the afternoon. And just to emphasize a point, if half of that coffee is in your system at 6 p.m., a quarter could still be in your system at midnight.

Yeah. Which is, you know, no one would have a quarter. Well, some people do, but, you know, we know that that's possibly not a good idea that's incredible so that's even at midday yeah so that's why uh what i say is the rule of thumb is you should not have tea or coffee after lunch uh if you want to have a good night's sleep so now you can see that this is all uh there is a domino effect. Somebody having late afternoon coffee will likely go to sleep relatively late or will not have deep sleep at night. And then in the morning, of course, this person is waking up with insufficient sleep and will need another cup of coffee just to wake up. So this cycle will continue unless somebody really makes an effort. So what I tend to say is try this in the weekend

because in the weekend, if you cut down on one cup of coffee or tea, it's likely that your brain will react and will give you a mild headache. And in the weekend, you have time to deal with that headache. And then in the weekday, try to continue that and you'll see that you may go to deal with that headache and then in the week they try to continue that and you'll see that you may go to sleep much better and then you can win yourself from excessive coffee yeah

okay that is a absolutely fantastic tip and uh it's amazing how many of these recommendations we're talking about actually were separate chapters in my book it's it's incredible like one of them is called enjoy your caffeine before noon. Um, so I'm like saying, guys, if you love it, enjoy it fine. But, but, but for me, I think, cause I've seen it so many times past noon, I've seen problems and no one, people are so attached to coffee and caffeine that so many people say, oh, you know, it doesn't affect me. It doesn't affect me. And when they start reducing it it they suddenly see how much things start to improve i don't know if you've seen that at all oh yeah i do that uh once a year i actually um completely stopped caffeine for two to three months and that's when that's the golden time because that's when I get very deep sleep and very restorative sleep and also my general anxiety.

Not anxiety, I would say my focus level goes up pretty high so I can really stay focused on what I'm writing or what I'm researching on. So I see all that benefit. And once in a while, it's good to have that self-experimentation to try and do something. It means getting off of coffee will give me maximum couple of days of headache. I'm not going to die. It's a stimulant, right?

It's a stimulant. It's a drug, actually, that many of us are taking every day multiple times. And, you know, it's interesting. You get better sleep. You're more productive. All these things that actually, you know, people think that coffee makes them alert and makes their acuity you know that their sort of sharpness go up but it was i think it was a great study from 2011 from bristol university that suggested that all it does is bring you back up to the same level as if you never drunk it in the first place

and i found that study although i didn't like it i thought i think this is probably true actually well coffee has a very different history means if you go back to the history of coffee this was the key for bringing coffee houses in the Middle East for example there's a nice article about how coffee houses started in Istanbul and the evening social activity was around coffee and then for some people particularly for people who had to wake up early and do the shift work early morning shift for them coffee

was a great medicine they would actually wake up and they wake up their life in the morning yeah incredible so actually could I just you know what there know, there's a tale out there, an old wives tale, if you will, that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours. Oh, actually, is it the other way around? Basically, I can't remember the phrase. I think it's one hour before midnight is worth two hours afterwards, in the sense that, you know, there's a lot of talk about growth hormone release. And actually, if we're sleeping before midnight, we get more off that. there any truth in that at all and you or you're not familiar with that sort of research well there is a growth hormone almost every hormone in our body has a circadian rhythm and growth hormone is one of them that goes up in the first half of our sleep and it also goes up when we have an empty stomach before sleep. So if you combine those two, then going to bed early has a huge benefit on growth hormone release. Another indirect, it's kind of a social constraint that we have. Irrespective of what time we go to bed, because of our job, because of

our children go to school or something else, we all have to wake up before, say, 7 or 7.30. So in that way, indirectly, if you go past midnight to go to your bed, then you are reducing the number of hours you sleep. And that has been shown in multiple studies, epidemiological studies, that people who go to bed later actually get less sleep. So when they get less sleep, they also get less growth hormone. And when you have less growth hormone, of course, for people like us who are past our 20s, we are not growing, but growth hormone does another very important thing. It actually repairs. A lot of the repair that happens in our body is driven by growth hormone. Most of the of the repair that happens in our body is driven by

growth hormone most of the stomach lining repair that happens every night is partly driven by growth hormone so in that way going to bed early has a huge impact on having better growth hormone spike and having better repair uh throughout our body yeah Yeah, absolutely incredible. But Sachin, you have been working hard, obviously, in your lab, but I'm pretty excited that your book is about to come out all over the world and here in the UK. It's called The Circadian Code.

What can people, what are they going to find out when they get your book? What are they going to learn? Are you going to sort of talk about research, about practical tips for them? Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about the book and what are they going to learn? Are you going to sort of talk about research, about practical tips for them? Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about the book and what's going to be in it?

Yeah, so the book is really my first attempt to let people, both the general public and also healthcare practitioners, healthcare workers, to learn a little bit about circadian rhythm. So it's a nice mix between what is the science behind circadian rhythm and So it's a nice mix between what are the signs behind circadian rhythm and how people can use this science in a very simple way

by timing when they should eat, when they should sleep, and what they should eat. There are also a few things about what they should eat. When they should exercise, because we don't have too much time to exercise, can we have a peak time when we can exercise maybe less and get more benefit? And the book also talks about how to take care of your circadian rhythm to reverse some of the diseases. So it goes from simple heartburn to cancer. And throughout the book, we also have examples of people

who have used very simple tricks to nurture their circadian rhythm and get the wisdom of the body and what they have achieved. So this is a very interesting book that goes back and forth between science and how to use the science of circadian rhythm in real life. Wow, Sachin, having seen you speak on both on your amazing videos on the internet, but also speaking alongside you and watching your talk, and it was just phenomenal and breathtaking. I can already get a sense that actually this book is going to have, you know, you know, personal story and anecdote weaved alongside science and cutting edge research. So I absolutely cannot wait to get it.

Guys, for those of you listening, I really would recommend you follow Sachin on Twitter. And, you know, really, I think this is one of the most important scientists currently in the world in terms of doing research that can actually transform what we do with our patients and you know transform the way that you're living your life and for me what's what's really key is that a lot of what sachin's research is bringing to us that i'm starting to use with my patients is that you know it's pretty achievable it's it's pretty achievable a lot of these suggestions you make are free of charge they don't cost any money you know they it's very very accessible for people

and I'm delighted that you could spare some time and I'm going to be getting that book the first day it comes out and I'd encourage you guys to get this book as well The Circadian Code again guys I'm going to link to Sacha I think you're mostly on Twitter is that right? or do you do any? yeah

I'll link to all of it in the show notes, which you can find at drchatty.com forward slash TRF. Sachin, one thing I didn't get to ask you, and I know a lot of people will be listening and wondering, you know, what about shift workers? You know, are there potentially there are some tips in the book for shift workers? Or are there any simple things that shift workers can do to apply the principles that you have, you know, that research has brought out yeah so the shift work is a very challenging uh work but at the same time shift workers are superheroes because just like superheroes when we are asleep they are the ones who are awake they take care of our health they take the sick ones to the hospitals but at the time, shift work has a huge toll on our body.

So we're trying now a couple of studies on shift workers. The first one is on firefighters because firefighters in the U.S., they have 24-hour shifts, so they're on for 24 hours and then off 24. It goes for four cycles, and then they get four days off. What we're trying to figure out is can they do time-restricted eating at least on their off days to build up resilience, to build up vitality, to build up their repair capacity so that when they do this very grilling shift work, it doesn't have a lasting adverse impact on the body. The second thing we're trying to see is whether they can still adopt some of the principles. Of course, they have to stay awake 24 hours, or at least they will wake up six, seven times, sometimes 10 times throughout the night

to respond to emergencies. But at the same time, can they at least stick to eating within 10 to 12 hours during their own days when they're working? That is aligned to their work schedule. And for firefighters, we're trying to do that for the daytime. For some of the shift workers who are going to work at nighttime and stay on that shift for a week. We'll see whether they can stick to it for the nighttime when they're awake.

And then we're also giving them tips how to sleep well during off days or sleep well during daytime when they get an opportunity to sleep. And these are, again, very simple tips. And sometimes many of them they can easily adopt. And we'll monitor these firefighters, San Diego firefighters for up to one year. There'll be 150 firefighters in our study. And we are really super excited because we'll hook them up. They're already hooked up with continuous glucose monitors. So we'll hook them up they're already hooked up with continuous glucose monitor so we'll see meal by meal and depending on the stress level how many emergency calls they're taking how their

body is responding in terms of glucose they will also have a continuous activity and sleep tracker a light exposure tracker all of this so we are excited about that. But at the same time, through our MyCicadianClock app, we see a lot of shift workers, emergency room physicians, and emergency responders who drive, say, ambulances. They're already adopting some aspects of circadian code, eating pattern, and they're finding many benefits. That's fantastic because as you say you know night shift workers are a critical part of society they they help us in

so many ways whether it was hospitals whether it's paramedics whether it's a fire yeah um engines have you know so it's very important that we can look after them and actually give them some really useful practical tools to help them improve their health such a final question now i have changed my own habits dramatically based upon your research so you know i i'm sort of pretty diligent most of the time at sticking you know i tip to it to a restricted eating window and it varies a little bit but you know i sort of normally manage to do 11 hours or you know the very the very most 12 hours i i kind of think in my head at least if I've got that 12 hour gap without any food going through my system, that's a good thing. You know, have you, since you started doing this research and seeing all these incredible benefits, has that changed your behavior and your family's behavior?

Oh, yeah. My behavior changed right away. behavior and your family's behavior? Oh yeah, my behavior changed right away. In fact, not only mine, almost everyone in our lab when they saw these mice, these mice changed their behavior. So I try to stick within, just like you, within 11 hours and sometimes I slip towards 12 hours and now I have a new criteria of how important your research is. It should not only change your own behavior, it should be convincing enough to change the behavior of your spouse and your mother. I've been successful in both fronts. Actually, my mother who was pre-diabetic a couple of years ago, now she eats within 10 hours and blood sugar has completely gone back to normal. She's very active and she's approaching 70 and she's still healthy.

She doesn't take any medication. And recently, I also achieved another milestone, and that is I could convince my mother-in-law. So this is the mother-in-law test for your research and she's now doing it she is doing it so she's she's actually more uh diligent than me so she does uh nine to ten hours max and she's finding a lot of health benefits again she she's also without medication so she's completely healthy um and has no complication yeah and i'm you know you mentioned your mother's story of pre-diabetes i've seen this as well in my clinic you know if if they you know yes you know the bulk of what they've done is restrict their eating window and that in itself has had benefits so for people listening i'd really

encourage you guys to to to think about giving it a go for a week or two just just see how you feel you know just you start to feel the difference one thing people might be thinking is yeah i get it i'm gonna try and do 10 hours or 11 hours what happens if you know one day a week or two days a week you know i'm on a business meal out and i eat late or i come back late does Does it matter if you can't do it every day? Yeah, actually we have even done that in our lab. So we have given mice one or two days off day in a week. And we still see that if they're sticking to say nine hours time restricted eating during the weekdays,

nine to ten hours, then going off for one or two days in the weekend still maintains the benefit. For humans, actually for us, it's very different. What happens is once you're used to eating all your food within, say, 10 to 12 hours, one day, personally, if I eat way past that window, first thing is I'm not hungry really to eat that food. And second is if I eat that food, I can really feel that the food just stays there in my stomach, doesn't get digested.

So next day, I don't feel like eating breakfast. So automatically I will delay my breakfast and then my body kind of responds saying that what you did was not good and don't try to do it again yeah so so you kind of learn from the wisdom of your body your body will tell you not to do it again yeah and i've experienced this myself but i've also heard from some of my friends that if you eat really late at night sometimes in the morning you you almost feel as though you've got a hangover uh even though even if you haven't drunk any alcohol but just from eating at the wrong time you can really start to mess all these systems up and feel awful the next day yeah so some of our

participants actually have given it a name they call it food hangover so if you eat very late at night the next day you have this food hangover and you don't feel like eating and you're groggy, your mind is foggy. A bit like jet lag, right? It's a bit like what happens when you're jet lagged. Exactly. Yeah. So half of the jet lag is just eating at the wrong time. So therefore is a tip to, I mean, are there some take-homes here that people can take if they're traveling across time zones? Yeah. So that's another thing that i even personally do i try to avoid food in flight and try to sleep as much as i can even though i'm not into sleep i have my eyes closed my ears closed and my system is resting and then when i raise the new time zone i just have my first breakfast and dinner so the new time zone timing i just

follow that timing and that helps a lot in beating jet lag yeah wow such a look i've said to you last question about five times now so that really is going to be the end of this uh conversation i've really enjoyed um chatting to you about all these you know different areas i want to thank you that for doing this research because I genuinely do believe that you and your team are helping to create really big change in the health of people all around the world. So thank you for that.

And thank you for giving up your time today. Professor Satyananda Panda, thank you. Thank you, Rangan. I'm really glad that I'm on your show and you are doing something very critical because we as scientists we do all this research but getting this research to the mass is something that we don't do well because we don't have that opportunity so for you giving me this opportunity to be on your show

actually is a is that missing link that you are filling out for many scientists so I'm really really thankful to you thank you it's my absolute pleasure and i'm sure i'll get you back on again at some point in the future take care thanks bye-bye so there you have it guys that's the end of my two-part conversation with professor sachin panda i hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you found it useful. And I really hope that you feel able to put some of those tips into practice into your life immediately. To take a more detailed look at everything I discussed with Sachin today, you can access all the show notes at drchatterjee.com forward slash panda. That's P-A-N-D-A forward forward slash panda i really encourage you guys to start checking out

the show notes pages i'm really trying to add more and more articles to them so that you can continue your learning experience once this podcast is over now don't forget guys please if you haven't already do pick up a copy of my book the four pillar plan many of the things that we discussed today including a 12-hour fast, enjoying your caffeine before noon, and even sitting around a table once a day, a lot of those things are actually described in detail in my book. And I talk through patients who've actually put those practices into their everyday life and go through all the benefits that people have reported back to me. So guys, if you haven't yet, please do pick up a copy of the book. You can access it via the show notes page or just on Amazon and all the usual places.

If you are listening to this in the USA or Canada, my book, The Four Pillar Plan has come out there about a month ago, but it's got a brand new title there and it's called How to Make Disease Disappear. Again, you will get a link to that on the show notes page, or you can just Google it and find it at one of your local bookstores. Guys, if you want to support this podcast, which I really hope you do, it's actually pretty simple to do so. You can just share this episode with a friend or with a family member, or take a screenshot and put it on social media, on Instagram, Insta stories, Facebook, Twitter. Do tag me, do tag my guests when you do this it helps me interact with you you can also press subscribe which is a great way for me to raise the profile of the podcast and

if you haven't already i'd be so grateful if you go onto your podcast platform and give this a five-star review it helps raise the profile of the podcast which means I in turn can hope to attract better guests for you in the future. Once again, guys, thank you so much for listening. Please do think about putting these tips into practice because when we feel better, we live more. I hope you guys have a fantastic week. I hope you can join me next time.