Circadian rhythms: Feeding patterns and Alzheimer’s disease
Eat. Sleep. Eat. Sleep. This is a pattern which all humans follow, we must eat to give our bodies the nutrients and energy to thrive and we must sleep to allow the body time to rest and recover. Our ancient ancestors followed the sun and developed internal mechanisms which we now understand to be circadian rhythms. These circadian rhythms command our bodies clock in terms of daily patterns of waking up, eating, and sleeping and are intrinsically connected to light-dark cycles. Yet the modern human being doesn’t follow the patterns of our ancestors, we stay up late into the night, we eat giant meals after being out for a night of drinking, we stare at our phone screens, and we consistently shift our sleep schedule. Researcher Dr. Fred Turek focuses on this in his work on circadian rhythms and its effect on our functions. The Turek lab research has illustrated that humans, along with many organisms, follow a 24-hour clock. They were able to disrupt this internal clock and a...