So the Holidays are over, we've all eaten too much and we all feel like a good diet would do us a lot of good... Why not try to go back to normal eating habits first?... Finding it hard? That's because your inner food clock has been completely unsettled over the last few weeks: too much of everything, and usually at irregular times...
This feeling is also well-known by people who are jet-lagged, work at night, by night owls, i.e. people tending to live more at night than during the day, and by "late-night snackers".
Our food clock is tied to multiple sites throughout the body and helps us make the most of our nutritional intake. "It controls genes that help in everything from the absorption of nutrients in our digestive tract to their dispersal through the bloodstream, and it is designed to anticipate our eating patterns." These genes thus quickly announce that the lunch hour, making us feel hungry even before it is time to eat.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have now discovered how a protein called PKCy plays an essential role in resetting our food clock which consists in a series of interacting genes and molecules. The research team also found that the PKCy protein collaborates with molecule called BMAL to stabilize the body's food clock. These results could help better understand various syndroms such as diabetes, obesity and other metabolic syndromes.