Body Clock Woes Lead to Obesity, Diabetes

When the body’s internal “clock” is out of whack, obesity and diabetes may become more likely. Researcher Joseph Bass MD, PhD, stated that, “The findings are "the tip of the iceberg" about the so-called clock’s effects on the body.

Bass and colleagues studied mice, but their results have implications for people, says Bass, a Northwestern University assistant professor of medicine, neurobiology, and physiology.

Body clocks are "fundamental biological machines" in humans and other animals, says Bass. Extra pounds may be one side effect of a broken (or ignored) body clock, suggests the study, which appears in Science Express, the online edition of Science.
The body clock developed long ago. It let animals (including humans) sleep without needing to get up and eat, and to seek food when predators were less likely to be on the prowl, says Bass. Nowadays, we don’t worry about being stalked by lions, and Jay Leno may affect our bedtime more than the setting of the sun. But the body clock remains part of our basic wiring, says Bass, who also heads Evanston Northwestern Healthcare’s endocrinology and metabolism division.

Think of it this way, he suggests. If the body is a musical band with different sections of instruments, the body clock is the conductor. "It works as long as everyone is in the same key and are all playing the same rhythm," says Bass. "Once the band leader is gone, all the sections are dissonant. You can’t listen to it; it’s noise," he says. "There’s an internal rhythm system that has to be synchronized."

Bass and colleagues compared mice with genetically altered body clocks to normal mice. They noticed that the genetically altered mice ate when they were supposed to be sleeping.

The genetically altered mice "had the munchies," "They were eating all day long and all through the night." Ordinarily, mice mainly eat at the start and end of their active period. That’s like breakfast and dinner, says Bass.

That normal eating pattern went out the window in the genetically altered mice. Constant eating led to weight gain, obesity, and trouble handling blood sugar, a problem seen in diabetes.

In the study, genetically altered mice on an ordinary diet gained a similar amount of weight as normal mice given high-fat foods. When the mice with the broken body clocks also ate high-fat food, they gained even more weight. The livers of the genetically altered obese mice started having trouble handling blood sugar. They also developed problems in secreting insulin, which controls blood sugar.

Genetic and environmental factors are probably involved in the body clock, says Bass.

More research is needed, but sticking to a regular schedule of eating and sleeping may help, Bass suggests.

"It’s important to know that normal behavior does program the animal to eat at certain times. A continuous eating pattern is abnormal. [People] should be sleeping through the night and not waking up to eat," he says.

Turek, F. Science Express, April 21, 2005. Joseph Bass, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, neurobiology, and physiology, Northwestern University and head of the endocrinology and metabolism division of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. News release, Northwestern University. News release, Science.

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