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A new study reveals that the internal clock of your body plays a role not only when you are very awake and sleepy, but also when you burn the most calories.
The study found that at rest, people burn about 10% more calories in the late afternoon and early evening compared to early morning.
"Doing the same thing at one hour of the day consumes a lot more calories than doing the same thing at another time of day surprised us," wrote the main author of the newspaper. Study, Kirsi-Marja Zitting, of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a statement.
The new findings could help explain why night workers and other people who do not meet their regular schedules run a greater risk of obesity. Such schedules are usually not aligned with the internal clocks of people who tell their bodies when to sleep and eat. [11 Surprising Things That Can Make Us Gain Weight]
"It's possible that eating when energy requirements are lower could make you gain weight," Jeanne Duffy, senior author of the Brigham and Brigham Hospital's Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, told Live Science. Women & # 39; s. Although the new study does not specifically test this idea, in general, people gain weight when they consume more calories than they burn, she said.
The study was published today (November 8) in the journal Current Biology.
A laboratory without a window
For the new study, researchers wanted to examine how the body's internal clock affects metabolism, regardless of individuals' level of activity, sleep, and eating habits.
To do this, they recruited seven people who (voluntarily!) Spent more than a month in a laboratory without knowing what time it was outside. Laboratories did not have a clock or window and participants did not have access to the telephone or the Internet. In addition, specific time frames have been assigned to allow people to sleep, wake up and eat.
Critically, each night they went to bed 4 hours later than the day before and kept in contact for three weeks. These time differences correspond to what a person would experience if she roamed the world in a week.
"Because they were the equivalent of going around the world every week, the internal clock of their body could not keep up," Duffy said. This meant that the body's clock "oscillated at its own pace" or kept its own internal time without resorting to external signals, Duffy said. "This allowed us to measure the metabolic rate at all hours of the day" biological ", she said. (The "biological" time refers to the time according to the internal clock of a person, regardless of the time of day or if a person was asleep or awake .)
The study found that people's energy expenditure at rest, or the number of calories burned, was the lowest at the end of the biological night, when people were experiencing a drop in their body temperature. The energy expenditure was highest about 12 hours later, in the afternoon / biological evening. Overall, people burned about 130 more calories during the biological afternoon and evening, compared to the early morning biological.
Future studies should examine whether these periodic changes in people's resting metabolic rate contribute to weight gain in people who do not follow their regular schedule, the researchers said.
For now, people trying to lose weight should try to maintain regular sleep schedules and meals, which is important for overall health, said the researchers.
The researchers also plan to examine how people's appetite and response to food vary with the time of day. as well as the influence of sleep time on these responses.
Originally published on Science live.
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