You know that feeling…

You ask your friends to meet for breakfast, and they say:

“sorry, can we meet later? I can’t eat until noon. I’m intermittent fasting.”

You roll your eyes – ugh, this dietary fad! Right?

WELL . . .

It turns out you can use intermittent fasting to your advantage when it comes to sleep, travel, and jet lag!

Dr. Daniel Jin Blum discussed with Dr. Yishan Xu a very important way to combat jet lag using your diet. While many of us are aware of our predominant circadian clock that is sensitive to light and dark cues, there seems to be a secondary circadian clock in our bodies (FEO) which is responsive to feeding and fasting rhythms.

If you have a long period of fasting, about 16 hours seems about the right amount, our bodies seem to respond after the fasting period like it is morning time. Because we fast unintentionally when we are sleeping, our bodies respond to long fasting periods as a restart in our circadian rhythms.

It seems that by simply shifting your food patterns, you can change your sleep patterns in a matter of two to five days.

So, how does the relationship between our predominant and secondary circadian clocks affect each other?

Dr. Blum says it is possible that skipping breakfast can disrupt synchronicity between our clocks. When we wake up, our cellular clock begins, let’s say around 7am. If we skip breakfast and eat our first meal around noon, there is a high change that our dietary rhythms is still active when we go to sleep at night. This creates a huge offset between our two inner clocks.

Here is a relatable example:

If you were to leave the west coast on a morning flight to land in the east coast, you might land around 4 or 5pm. So, if you eat right when you land, you would fast for 16 hours from the time you land. Let’s say you eat at 4pm east coast time (hypothetically) – you would then fast until 8am the next morning and reset both your light/dark systems and metabolic systems at the same time! Voila!

Next time you travel?

Give it a try next time you travel (once it is a little less scary to do so!). Make sure you listen to the conversation between Dr. Blum and Dr. Xu: How to deal with jet lag? (Deep into Sleep Podcast episode 043)

If you tried it, please let us know how did it go!

Thanks Laura for organizing this blog article.

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