Review: The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight

The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight by Satchin Panda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“A disrupted (internal) sleep clock is the mother of all maladies.”

Did you know that your immune system, your gut bacteria, your body weight, and even mental health issues -- are all connected to your circadian rhythm? In this book, The Circadian Code, Dr. Satchin Panda, biologist/researcher at The Salk Institute, explains why it is so important to protect our sleep.

When I read books like this, the researchers all seem to make this one thing crystal clear – science doesn’t tiptoe around our preferences. Facts like the ones revealed in this book are enormous inconveniences. Unwelcome. But, being unwelcome doesn’t make them less true. For example, Dr. Panda’s research reveals that we should wake up the same time every day and go to bed the same time every night. Seven days a week. Ouch. We should not eat for approximately three hours before going to bed. Ouch. We should not drink any caffeinated beverages after Noon or 1 pm. Ouch. We should not drink alcohol within several hours of going to bed, and we should filter out blue light from our devices throughout the evenings using apps which do it for us or with blue-light filtering glasses. Some of these “shoulds” – no big deal. Others? I really don’t want it to be so.

What happens when we ignore all of this advice? If we are 10 years old, it could hamper our physical growth and make it hard to learn new things. If we are 60 years old, we might struggle with immune system issues, cancer or cognitive decline, or have a real problem losing extra weight.

Panda’s explanation of the role of melatonin and how it signals other organs to slow down to rest for the evening is especially interesting. Eating too close to bedtime wreaks havoc on the cascade of signals that help all systems shut down appropriately and has profound impact on insulin and blood sugar levels.

Dr. Panda’s theme is this - the key to fixing circadian dysrhythmia is to control when you eat, more than how much you eat. Restrict eating to a set number of hours. For example, if you normally rise at 6 am and go to bed at 9:30 pm, then eat your first meal at about 9 am, not when you first wake up at 6 am. Then eat two more meals at 1 pm and 6 pm, for example. You do not count calories; you eat healthfully but you eat how much you want. If you do this, you have restricted your feeding to a 9 hour window, from 9 am to 6 pm. No snacks before bed; no caloric beverages before bed either. And it works. You will sleep better if you do this and will lose weight as well.

Dr. Panda acknowledges that at times in our lives, all of us are, unavoidably, shift-workers. A young mother getting up with babies, someone traveling across countries and time zones, and the whole world of people who regularly do shift work. He offers specific advice to combat and repair this dysregulation of our circadian cycles.

The role of sleep in our lives has unquestionably risen to the top and its power to heal or hurt cannot be ignored. Science is bound to reveal more now that it has the full attention of so many research institutes.

If you are focused on fixing your health issues or on preventing health issues, especially cognitive decline, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and obesity – start by reading books like this, because lousy sleep is the mother of all maladies. A reliable sleep rhythm is strongly connected to when we eat our food. Learning why this is true is the first step to fixing it. Two thumbs up for Satchin Panda's research and this book!


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