Time & Light: Missing Pieces of a Healthy Lifestyle with Satchin Panda PhD

Mindy Pelz
On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you Sachin Panda. If you are not familiar with him, he is the circadian rhythm expert and has been doing a tremendous amount of research on time restricted eating, aka intermittent fasting. And so this is a conversation wow. That I have been wanting to bring to you all for a very long time. Time.

If you're not familiar with Doctor Panda's work, I can tell you that not only is he a professor at the Salk Institute in California, but he has done multiple research studies on circadian rhythm and particularly how it relates to the time of food, the time of light, and the time of movement, which we talk a ton about in this conversation. He has written two books, both all around the circadian rhythm. My favorite one personally is the circadian code. And he has a really interesting app you all can use and might find helpful called on timeout, which is all of his research put together in one area. Now, let me tell you what you're going to hear in this conversation.

So a lot of you have asked me over the years, when is the best timing of food, like where should I put my eating window? And he's gonna answer that for you. It's really cool. The way he explains it is profound. And right now, just so you know, there's a lot of discussion about like shouldn't I eat when I first get up in the morning?

Especially, we're hearing this a lot when it comes to protein, that we're supposed to get up and eat protein right away. He's going to tell you, well, I'll give you a little clue. He's going to tell you why eating immediately upon waking is not a great idea. So you're going to hear that in this episode. I also wanted to bring him into the jet lag conversation because a lot of people are trying to overcome jet lag and figure out how to shorten jet lag.

And so I wanted to know if you could manipulate the time of your food food to the new time zone you were going to, could it possibly minimize the amount of jet lag you have? And he answers that really cool. And then of course we had to go into this study. So if many of you are still wrestling with the media blitz that happened about a month ago, talking about 91% increase in cardiovascular health when you intermittent fast, this was an exact opposition of some of the research he's done on 16 eight fasting. So I wanted his opinion on what appeared to be the complete opposite of what he's seen in his lab.

And then we ended up on the weight loss drugs, and what does he think about the weight loss drugs and how that fits into circadian rhythm? And what do we need to know about the up and down side of the weight loss drugs? Really good in depth conversation on all things circadian rhythm. So Doctor Sachin Panda, enjoy. I hope so many of your questions get answered in this as it did for me.

And I just really deeply appreciated the way he brings the information forward. So please enjoy and I hope you get a ton out of this. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

When you're in the middle of a fast, do you ever hit a wall and then you really start to struggle? Like, I know this happens to me sometimes. Like I'm going along, I'm feeling really good, and then bam. All of a sudden I'm out of energy, I'm starving and it's like my brain is turned off. So check this out.

If that's happened to you, there's a really good chance you're running low on minerals. Fasting makes your mitochondria produce more energy. It speeds up fat burning, it helps you make more ketones. So your brain is really sharp. But the part of fasting that we don't talk enough about is that those benefits often come at an expense to your body.

So you got to look at your body doing the right thing at the right time, always. And when you hit that crash, it's a large chance that your body has had to use a ton of minerals to be able to supercharge you in the fasted state. And if your minerals are already low, you can end up depleted. So that is why I love b minerals. They make a full spectrum mineral supplement that is perfect for fasting.

It's in a liquid form, it literally tastes like water. You just have to take a shot halfway through your fast and you can keep going a whole lot longer without the hunger and the fatigue. So if you want to experience this, if you want to try it in your fasting window and see what kind of results you get, just go on over to beamminerals.com and enter the code Mindy for 20% off. And as always, let me know how it works for you. I'm really excited to bring this information to you all because you deserve to thrive in your fasted state.

Let me start by welcoming you to the resetter podcast. And you know, there's a lot of reasons people can be a fan of yours. And I really have to say, I've been following your research. I've read your book, I've been listening to your circadian thoughts on timing of food. And it's amazing to me how much there is to discuss when you just bring up what to eat and when to eat.

It's like there's years of discussion there. And so here's where I'm going to start. This is by asking you what's more important, when to eat or what to eat, especially when we're looking at chronic disease and inflammation and weight loss, because. It'S almost asking you to choose between two, one out of your two kids. So I guess both are important.

Satchidananda Panda
But at the same time, imagine that the good quality food is your best friend. And if that best friend shows up on time when you are free, then that's good. But if the best friend shows up, knocks on your door every night at 01:00 in the morning, then that person may not be, that person may not be your best friend. So the point is, timing can make good food junk. So that's why.

Mindy Pelz
Wait, wait, say that again. Timing can make good food junk. Can it do the opposite? Can it make junk food good? So I won't say that it can make the junk food good, but what I can say is it can lessen the bad effect of junk food.

Satchidananda Panda
It can lessen the bad effect of junk food because the timing, depending on what time you're eating relative to fasting, timing can turn on many defense mechanism in our body, including genes that detoxify bad things in junk food. So that's why I said that timing can lessen the bad effect of junk food. Right? Which doesn't give us a free pass for junk food. I just want to point that out.

Mindy Pelz
But it is an interesting, you know, a lot of the research that you've done, I have poured myself into, and one of the conclusions I've come out of your research and really thought deeply about is if we have such poor quality food and the food industry is profiting from this poor quality food, there's no incentive for the food industry to change. So therefore, the best tool we can give people for, again, for weight loss and inflammation and metabolic health is, okay, just take that toxic food and let's compress it into one eating window so that you have a longer period for your body to rest. So that like you said, the genes can turn on, but it can also heal from the toxicity of food. Am I. Am I thinking that through?

Satchidananda Panda
Right, that's true. I mean, one caveat, I must say, from the beginning, is most of the stuff that I'll be talking about, about genes, biochemistry, proteins or detoxification, all of these are done in laboratory mouse models because that's where we can actually go look deeply into all these factors. We can also give the mice healthy food or junk food at different time of the day. And very systematically, methodically, we can look at every single gene in the mouse genome. And, in fact, we share almost 99% of the genes with mouse.

So that's why a lot of this can be translated to humans. In fact, every single medication, supplements, everything that we eat that we take to manage, prevent or cure any disease were tested at some point in mice or many laboratory animals. So with that caveat, most of the biochemical stuff or genetic stuff that I'll talk about mostly comes from laboratory study. You actually bring up a really valid point, because in the world of science, I feel like a lot of times people will dismiss a good study because it was a mouse study, and they would say, well, this is a better study because it was a human study. And then we have this new emerging question, which is, but the human studies aren't necessarily being done on the same demographic.

Mindy Pelz
Like, women aren't separated out. And I've read some intermittent fasting studies where they had a cohort that had 17 year old men all the way up to 55 year old women. And I'm like, you should never look at a metabolic system of a 17 year old man and compare it to a 55 year old woman. So just for the people listening, do you feel like we need more human studies, or do you feel like the mouse studies really are giving us enough information of how to look at some of this behavior for ourselves? Well, the mouse studies give us some clue that it might work in humans, but we have to do these studies in humans, because ultimately, we're doing all these research not to make mice healthier, they're already healthy, but make humans healthier and live a long, productive life.

Satchidananda Panda
So we do have to go back to humans and do these studies. But at the same time, for example, when I talk about time restricted eating or fasting or anything that we do in the lab, and we say, what happens in the liver? And in that case, we're actually going and looking at liver biopsy samples in mice, which would be almost impossible to do in humans, particularly if you're not having fatty liver disease. And if your liver is not a threat. Nobody is going to give a, I won't give a piece of my liver for simple biopsy.

Mindy Pelz
Yes. So that's why we have to keep that in context. Like when we are talking about what is the impact of certain things, medication or supplements or lifestyle, on internal organs that are very difficult or most impossible to sample. For example, we can also look at impact of time restricted feeding or intermittent fasting on brain health by looking at different parts of the brain. There is no way we can do that study on humans.

Satchidananda Panda
But these studies actually tell us, okay, is there enough changes that we see in laboratory studies to begin to ask this question in humans? Because usually the rule of thumb is if it doesn't help a mouse, it's less likely that it will help a human. You know, the way I always say it is, animal studies get us in the ballpark. Then we've got to decide what seat we're going to sit at. And so I'm a big fan of n of one, figuring out how to take these studies like the ones you're doing and how do we make them applicable to our own life.

Mindy Pelz
Which leads me to my next major question for you, is there's a lot of different lengths of time restricted eating or fasting that has been researched. Do you have a sense for metabolic health? Again, for cleaning up our metabolic system, which is a huge problem right now. What length fast do you feel like? Does that the best?

Satchidananda Panda
That's a very loaded question because. Yeah, I know. It's the one I get all the time. Let's put it this same way as you would take a medication. So, for example, if someone has diabetes or pre diabetes and is prescribed a medication commonly prescribed, say, metformin, there is no single dose of metformin that should be applicable to everybody.

Because if somebody is newly diagnosed pre diabetic, maybe somebody should take 500 milligrams of metformin. And if someone already has diabetes, maybe higher dose. And if somebody has really severe diabetes, then maybe two or three medications. So we have to put that into context. So, similarly for someone who has metabolic disease.

And when we think metabolic disease, you know, it's a very fuzzy term, but we can break it down to individual components. So typically, the three things that affect us that we really are concerned about are blood glucose, blood cholesterol, blood pressure in blood cholesterol, we can say blood lipids, cholesterol, and total triglyceride. Then we can add, say, abdominal obesity, because that predisposes us to many different diseases. So now let's think about obesity and high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, high blood sugar. So, depending on who has what and how severe it is, then one can begin with certain amount of fasting.

The other thing is we, when we are predisposed or we develop certain metabolic disease, it develops because of our interaction between genes and our livestock. And many of us do have bad genes, and that's inescapable. But then, in terms of lifestyle, we have developed our habit of eating certain things. We have preference for certain type of food, amount of food. It's not that easy to just start fasting right away.

So that's why when we do our studies in humans, the first thing we want to see is, well, does timing actually, is timing contributing, mistiming of food, contributing your disease, or is it something else? Like somebody may be already eating religiously regularly within 10 hours window, but that person may already have metabolic disease or metabolic syndrome. So then there is not much room for improvement in that case. But paying attention to food quality and quantity might matter. Whereas if someone who is already eating at a window of, say, 14 hours, I'm not saying that every day this person eats within 14 hours.

Just imagine. And the last two weeks, one is the earliest time you ate and one is the last time. Latest. How late did you eat? And that is 06:00 in the morning.

I woke up and had a cup of coffee with cream and sugar and something else to munch. And then the last time I ate over the last two weeks was going out for dinner and having a very late dinner at least couple of times in the last two weeks, say at 10:00 or 11:00 so that gives me already 15 16 hours of window within which my body was expecting food. So in that case, reducing that eating time to a narrow interval might benefit. Because it's a change. Is that because you're switching it from.

What you're doing habitually or randomly over the last two weeks? If I have eaten two or three times before 08:00 a.m. In the morning, two or three times after 08:00 p.m. In the evening. So that means my body is already used to expecting food between 07:00 a.m.

To 09:00 p.m. Body has already gotten this signal that, okay, so this person is likely to eat within such a long window of time, the body remembers it. So in that case, reducing that timing to a certain time can be beneficial. So then the question is, well, can I just go to 6 hours or 2 hours or 3 hours? Which will be a huge shock and people may not be able to stick to it.

So that's why we always suggest, well, if it is too difficult, try one week within sticking to a 12 hours window that works for you. Depending on what time you wake up, what time you go to bed, and what you do in the morning or evening, try to find a 12 hours that works for you. It's not saying that you should start skipping breakfast, eating at from noon to 08:00, but select your own window. And then if you get used to it for a week or two, then you can reduce it to 10 hours. Because both mouse studies and human studies that we do, we are seeing that when people who have a habitual or usual eating window of 14 hours or longer.

So that means over the last two weeks, you have eaten at least two or three meals within that 14 hours window. Suppose, say, 06:00 a.m. To 08:00 p.m. So that will give you 14 hours or 08:00 a.m. To 10:00 p.m.

That will give you 14 hours or longer. Then reducing that to 10 hours seems to give many benefits. And so that's the starting point. You start with 12 hours, and then if you can reduce it to 10 hours, then that's a good thing. And some people try to reduce even to 8 hours or 6 hours.

I must say that we, when we look at really objective data, because we have done this study on many hundreds of people now, and some people say that they can do 8 hours and they start, and after five or six weeks, we see them drifting towards 10 hours and then kind of stabilizing around 10 hours. So that's why we feel like 10 hours is a magic spot where you can have long term compliance, long term adherence. But if you can do 8 hours, that's also good enough. So I think when people reduce it too much, and this is what we have seen few cases, particularly with women, because women, I should not say this, but many women want to have it all. So they will start intermittent fasting or time restricting.

They want to eat within, say, six to 8 hours. They want to improve the quality of food, so they end up eating only salad, and they reduce the nutrient intake. And then they go on, they go for 4 miles, 5 miles, run four times, five times a week. And then what happens is your body is actually into a shock because your body is not getting enough nutrient, enough energy to sustain very basal metabolic processes that your body needs. And this usually happens mostly with normal weight people or slightly overweight people who are trying to have it all.

And if you. If women are still menstruating, then they should. They would see irregular menstrual cycle, or some of them can even become amenorrheic. And that's a good sign that you are getting into an energy deficit that's not supporting basal function in your body. That's why we rarely ask people to reduce their eating window to less than 8 hours because there is some risk.

Unless you're paying attention to your quality and quantity of nutrition and physical activity along with it. That can be a respect. So sorry, that was a very long answer. Yeah, no, that was really well said and actually backs up a lot of my work and what I've done with, with women specifically is make sure that we don't get, at certain times of the menstrual cycle, too much in this calorie deficit place. And it's specifically around the hormone progesterone.

Mindy Pelz
Doesn't do well when we're in too much of a glucose restricted state, and the thyroid doesn't do well with consistent calorie restriction. So I like for women to have a more cycling according to where their hormonal profile is and what. What's going on, whether they're menopausal or menstruating. And it leads me to this question for you, is, do you feel like. So let's say I take.

I go to 12 hours of an eating window, I get comfortable there. Now I go to 10 hours, I'm like, hey, 10 hours is good. I think I'll just stay here. Here. Do you find that the fasting benefits stop?

If you are just super comfortable with 10 hours and you just do 10 hours over and over and over and over again, will you eventually plateau with results? Does the healing stop? What do we know about that? Yeah, so there are very few long term studies to a year or more. So it's very difficult to say what are the benefits?

Satchidananda Panda
But what we see is you got to define what are the. What are the benefits people experience. So when we ask people why they continue to do it, what is driving them to do it, then their usual response is actually not metabolic health to be as the immediate benefit. What they say is they, some of them, they say that they sleep better, particularly those who stop their eating window at least 3 hours before the habitual bedtime. So suppose if you're going to bed at 10:00, if your kitchen closes at 630 or seven, then they tend to sleep better.

And then they experience that. If they eat later at night, then that night they have bad sleep, or they wake up in the middle of the night. So they tend to do it because they sleep better. The second benefit that we always hear is, I think that's linked to sleeping better, is they feel more energetic throughout the day. And, yeah, you know, if you're eating late and sleeping bad, then of course you'll feel lethargic the next day.

So this is another benefit. And then the third one is a lot of people who have acid reflux or heartburn. Either the severity of acid reflux or heartburn goes down, or some of them who have mild form, it may disappear altogether. And these are the things that actually drive people to stick with it. Then the question is, well, suppose somebody was pre diabetic where the blood sugar level was fasting.

Blood sugar level was between 100 to 125. They started doing intermittent fasting or time restrict eating. So within 10 hours and they became normal glycemic. And then the question is, if they continue to do this, will they again become pre diabetic? Because that's when you will say that, well, the benefits kind of disappear.

And this is means, personally, I haven't seen any case where people, and as I said, there are not too many studies where the studies have continued beyond one year. There is no tre study beyond one year. But what I hear anecdotally from people, and also in my own family, one or two people who are pre diabetic, they became normal glycemic. The benefits continue for five, six, seven years now. And then the weird thing is, once they start eating outside that window late into the night, then, yes, the hemoglobin a, once you go up slightly, the fasting blood glucose go up, and then they see that and then they come back re adoft to this 10 hours window or 8 hours window.

Yes, and then they stay within the range. But the point is, as we get older, our risk for many of the disease also goes up. So it will be interesting to see, after five, six, seven years or ten years, will you again become pre diabetic, or will your blood pressure go up slightly? Because if there is a genetic condition, then the lifestyle eventually may show up at the same time, you know? Yeah, interesting.

The point is particularly the age between 35 and 60. That's when, of course, I don't want to say that 35 is middle aged, but it's pre middle age. Oh my gosh, you just made a few people turn off from our. But this period is very crucial for all of our lives because we want to be at our optimum physical, emotional and intellectual health, right? The physical health.

We have to be metabolically healthy. We should be free of any disease for which we have to take a medication every single day. Let's put it. Make it very clear that because this is the time when we have other things to do, this is the time when people start a family, or those who started a family earlier. This is the window in which the kids will get out of the house, they will go to college.

And when you're talking about 50 to 60, maybe if you had kids earlier, you may even become a grandparent. This is also the time when there are a lot of life changes are happening. You may be changing, you may be changing jobs. You may be going for the personal life. Also, some people may get out of a marriage, get into another relationship.

This is also the time when people get into double or triple caregiving. The parents are aging, we have to give them care. The kids are not fully grown up yet. You have to care for them. And then if your spouse or your loved one has some other condition, you have to care for them.

You have a lot of responsibilities at home, at work. You may be having some community engagement, other stuff outside your friend, family relationship, then your friendship. Also, lot of things go on during this age, from 35 to 60. So that's why is very critical to maintain optimum physical, emotional and intellectual health in those years. And once you maintain, once you glide to, say, fly to the age of 60 with great health, emotional, intellectual and physical health, then the rest of the life, the next 30 years or 40 years will be much better.

So that's why. Oh, amazing. I only have four more years to go, so you want to hit 60 in the best metabolic health possible. Is that what you're saying? Yeah.

Mindy Pelz
Amazing. I always say that have a personal goal that depending on how you look at it, if you have children, then have a personal goal that you should be metabolically healthy without any chronic medication, when your kids finish high school or kids finish college, or when your kids are getting married, so that you can actually dance, real dance, not this slow moving dance for your kids. You sound like you're a dancer. Like I was asking somebody, why do you want to be healthy? And the person said that, I want to really dance in my daughter's wedding.

Yeah. Oh, it's a good reason. That's a really good reason. That's what matters. So that's why, coming back to the circadian aspect, then what happens is when you think about lifestyle, lifestyle breaks down to nine components that is the quality, quantity and timing of food, exercise and sleep.

Satchidananda Panda
And once we take care of this, at least if we take care of the timing component, then everything else falls into its right place. Because to be very clear, it's very difficult to remember, even keep track of how many kilocalories we eat in a day. I don't know about you, even nobody can sustain, I cannot guesstimate how many kilocals I have consumed. No. So, yes, and the quality also, I cannot say how much carbohydrate, protein or fat I consume on any given day.

So the only thing I remember is the timing. So that's why timing becomes a very tangible, very personal aspect of our life. And just imagine everything that we do in a day, even this conversation that we have between you and I, we set a time and we did it. And once we are on time, then everything flows perfectly fine. Just imagine if I was half an hour late to this podcast, you'll be so upset and mad, right?

Mindy Pelz
And throw everything off. It's a good analogy. It's a really good analogy. Similarly, our body has the circadian timing, so that means it has a timetable that tells us that has already pre and that has already prescribed us, ideally, when we should go to bed, how long we should be in bed, when we should wake up, when we should start eating, when we should stop eating, when is it better for us to go outdoor and do some exercise, and when to wind down, and if we are on that time, if we're on time with our body's circadian schedule, then everything will fall into its right place.

Amazing. So, well said. So when we're looking at the timing of food, this has been a question my community has asked over and over again. When's the best time for me to eat? Is it, I always say eat in the daylight.

We have some new research that's coming out saying you should have protein within a half an hour of waking up in the morning. We have other people say, wait a couple of hours after you wake up. And yet I think a lot of faster skip breakfast and have their eating window, and at like nine or 10:00 at night. So can we, do we know from research where this eating window should go to maximize our metabolic health? Yeah.

Satchidananda Panda
So this is a question that's always. You go, you've answered this a thousand times. No, no, no, it's not. It means it's a very personal, it all depends on your personal life. Because there are two things.

One big thing is in the pursuit of perfection. We should not give up what is good for you. Right. We always think about, okay, so there is, it has to be this super optimized, perfect plan, but then it doesn't fit my schedule, so maybe I should give up everything. No, that's not true.

So let's break it down to what time of the day, what happens in our body at different time of the day, so that you can actually figure out when. When is the ideal time for you. So. So let's start with waking up. So when we wake up, that's the time when we have the maximum stress hormone, cortisol.

So you may be saying that, okay, in the daytime, we are too stressed. In the evening, you're trying to juggle many things. You are stressed. We are doing wet lifting or strength training, whatever you're doing, even stress. But actually the maximum cortisol happens within 45 minutes after waking up.

Then the question is, well, we know that having food with cortisol is not a good idea because it doesn't. I was just going to say that's not a great combo. And then the other half of the story is melatonin, which is the night hormone that rises throughout night, reaches its peak maybe two to 3 hours before we wake up. And then it gradually goes down. And when we wake up, we still have nearly 30% of our melatonin level.

It has to go down completely for us to feel. And that's why some people, when they wake up little bit earlier than when they're supposed to wake up, they feel, like, groggy sleepy. And if you take a large dose of melatonin, try to fall asleep, next morning, you're feeling still sleepy because your body still has a lot of. Yes, I've been melatonin. In addition to making your brain to sleep, it also makes your pancreas to sleep.

So that means when you eat your breakfast, most breakfast have some carbohydrate that needs to be broken down to glucose and that needs to be absorbed by a body. So insulin plays a big role in that. But when melatonin is around, then insulin production from pancreas slowed down. It's not completely starved, but it just slows down. So in that way, in the morning, as the stress, someone is high.

Melatonin is high for at least an hour or two. It's not the right time to eat. I think I started saying that one should wait for an hour or two after waking up. And this has now amplified. Everybody's followed.

Mindy Pelz
Well, but it makes sense. It makes sense because what you're saying is that when cortisol and melatonin are high, what you need to be metabolically healthy is not quite there. So it would make sense to wait for these two hormones to go down and then eat so that you're putting yourself in a little bit a better metabolic intensity. But here is another caveat that is there is no human study yet showing this effect. And the reason is?

Satchidananda Panda
The reason is it's really for that study, you have to actually bring people to the clinic. They should sleep there. And then immediately after waking up, you can start measuring melatonin and cortisol and also give them a bolus of food and measure their blood glucose for the next one and a half hour, which is a very difficult experiment. Got it. The converse has been done where people are given food because melatonin also rises two to 3 hours before we go to bed.

So then the question is, if you give a bolus of food very close to bedtime, measure melatonin and measure blood glucose, then there is a nice match between how high our melatonin is and how bad our body is. Our sleep. I've seen it on my sleep, on my aura ring. I see it all the time. If I eat too late, that thing has been done.

But the morning one, experimental, it has not been done. It's just based on the idea that this might happen. But at least few, in many of our studies, we have seen people who just delay their breakfast. I'm not saying that they're delaying their breakfast to noon or 10:00 they're delaying a couple of hours in the morning, but they're not actually advancing their dinner time that much because the delay itself is giving them 10 hours. They also improve their blood glucose level.

So, you know, it's not too many people, we don't have enough power there to say conclusively, as I said, there is no very specific human study in this subject, in this topic, that there should be a good morning fast of one to 2 hours. But the hormonal profiles make sense. And then there are some studies, few individuals who deliver fast, they benefit from their glucose profile. So those things align. So then eating in the light would make sense.

Mindy Pelz
Try to eat when it's light out daytime. So unless somebody wakes up at 02:00 in the morning and habitually. Yeah, but that's not there. That's. That's shift working, which I want to get to in a moment.

Or, you know, even what happens when you change, like, you go into another time zone.

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One question I have, and I've done a bunch of research on this is our microbes. How much are our microbes involved in this process of helping regulate blood sugar? And do the right, the microbes have a circadian rhythm that we need to be following. We're talking about hormone patterns. What about those microbes?

Do they have a circadian rhythm? The microbes actually change throughout day and night. So, for example, we go to bed with a set of microbes in our gut and we wake up with a different set. Wow. The composition of our microbiome actually changes throughout 24 hours.

Satchidananda Panda
The reason is very simple. When we fast, as we fast, our intestine has less food than the environment for those microbes changes. So they have. So this fasting environment promotes certain microbes and suppress other microbes. And then as we eat and we have food in our system that changes the environment.

So again, they switch flips and certain type of microbes of Florence and other microbes will die down or will reduce in number. So there are studies showing, yes, the microbial composition changes throughout 24 hours. And we are at least, there is one thing that is universally now accepted from microbiome researchers, is we should have as many different types of microbes in our body as possible, particularly beneficial microbes in our, in our gut as possible, because they do different things. They can break down food into different bioactive molecules and nourishes. So then the question is, right, do you want all the actors on the stage at the same time, or do you want the actors to come do their part at different chapter of the play?

So by having a strong feeding fasting cycle, you essentially have a nice orchestra or nice play going on inside your gut, so that at different times you have different microbes coming in, doing their part when they can flourish, and then they are disappearing, making room for the other set of microbes to come in and do their part. So I'm wondering then, if we have different microbes at night compared to the day, then what would signal that could be the change of light? Which then do those microbes? Maybe don't you know, you've got the, I love the way you phrase that. When melatonin goes up to put us asleep, the pancreas goes to sleep.

Mindy Pelz
But do we also have another effect of the microbes dramatically shifting? And those are not going to be as good at regulating blood sugar or absorbing nutrients, because they're meant to be a different set of microbes for nighttime. Yeah. So those things have not been investigated that well, at least in humans. In mice, we know that there are different sets of microbes.

Satchidananda Panda
They come up at different time. And again, there is not much research on what happens to that microbial composition if we shine light on the mice at different time of the night. But for the circadian system, as far as we know, so far, the light has to go through the eyes of the retina to reset the master clock in the brain. And then that brain clock has to send signal to the rest of the body to influence circadian rhythm. So there is no direct effect of light on the microbes independent of the brain.

It has to go through the brain. So there is not much research on that. And most of the microbiome changes largely connected to the quality, quantity and timing of food we eat. I said, again, largely connected. And since the quality, quantity of food also changes at different time, because what we eat for breakfast is very different from what we eat for dinner, theyre also nourishing different types of microbes at different time.

Mindy Pelz
So the microbes respond to the quality of food. And when you eat and now that youre going to get the rhythm of these microbes depending on your lifestyle behavior around those things. Yeah. Now, what happens if you change time zones? So this is something that I've been thinking about with jet lag in general.

Can we use timing of food to either improve jet lag, you know, response to jet lag? And what happens when I go to a completely different time zone? How long does it take my microbes to really reboot themselves and get onto that new time zone? Yeah. So there are studies showing, initially we thought that all the resetting of our circadian rhythm to new time zone occurs primarily through light, which is still true to large extent, because light affects our sleep wake cycle, and timing of food directly affects our metabolic rhythm, which in turn influences sleep wake cycle.

Satchidananda Panda
So then the question is, how can we combine the effect of light and food? How do we optimize that when we travel to new time zone? Or for example, when you're doing shift work, how do you adjust to different shifts? So this is, again, an active area of research. And at the same time, it's a very difficult area of research because, you know, you have to, you have to abruptly change light and darkness, either in laboratory condition for mice or in humans in clinical studies, because it'll be even more expensive to fly people from here to Europe for your studies.

Mindy Pelz
Yeah, that's, that would be tough. But still, the bottom line is, yes, by adjusting the food timing, at least in animal models, in rats, they do reset to the new time zone much better and much faster. So the rule of thumb is you need at least one day to adjust to a 1 hour change in time zone. And some people may take even more than that. Just imagine when the daylight saving time and standard time, those things change.

Satchidananda Panda
Some people can take up to a week to readjust to the new timing, which is only an hour. Just imagine that your body can take one week after one week to adjust 1 hour. So in animal experiment and rats, people have shown that when you change food timing in sync with light dark cycle, then these rats reset their clock to the new time zone or light dark cycle much faster than the rats that just changed the light dark cycle. And there was no chance to foot timing, they could lead to another one. So that brings up this important question.

Like when you, particularly when we start travel on the travel day, many of us, we try to wake up very early in the morning, because again, just imagine the real life you have. If you are traveling with somebody else, then you have to wake them up. You have to take care of few things in the morning. So you may be waking up one or 2 hours and sometimes even 3 hours before your habitual wake up time to get to the airport or start driving. And so that's a circadian rhythm disruption to begin with because you have reduced your sleep time.

And then when you reach the new time zone, if you're reaching late at night, our reflexive behavior is, well, you should not go to bed empty stomach, so you should eat something and you're actually eating very late at night at the new place. So, and then in between, if you're flying across a continent by going from here to Europe or vice versa, sometimes we entertain ourselves with a lot of airline food flight and watch movies and stay away. That again is a lot of disruption. So the bottom line is if we pay attention to what time you are eating, what time is your flight, or when you are reaching, and if you try adjusting your time, timing of eating to the new time zone on the day of your travel. So for example, on the day, the day of your travel, because, you know, some people say that you should try adjusting two or three days before and it's very difficult because you're trying to, you're preparing to do stuff and then if you're there only for two or three days and coming back, then there's not much time to adjust.

If you cannot do two or three days before then at least that day. So for example, if I, when I fly from say, west coast to east coast, I also go through the same thing. I have to wake up an hour or two earlier to get to the airport. And at 06:00 a.m. In the morning when I walk through the airport, it just screams when I see people lining up to get that morning breakfast, morning bagel.

Mindy Pelz
Me too, me too. And the line is long and the food is toxic. I have the same problem. When I look at that, it's like, come on, you're not going to work, you can't sit in the aeroplane, you're not running, you're not going for a ten k, your body doesn't need that food. You can just go take out your neck pillow and eye mask and try to catch up on that sleep that you lost.

Satchidananda Panda
And that's what somebody, everybody would travel should try to do. And then in flight and after you have rested means from west coast to east coast is sometimes can be three to four, 5 hours flights. Then you can take out whatever you have brought with you to eat or eat a little bit on flight. And then when you reach ideally you are reaching before nine or ten in the night so you can reach out, have some food. So then the next day morning.

And this is something that's very important that next day morning. If you can go out for a morning walk, slow jog or be outdoor after waking up, that actually helps tremendously to reset to the new time zone. In fact, many successful people, I have met, many successful businessmen and other professionals who travel a lot and have been healthy. I ask them, so what's your secret? They'll say, we'll tell you one thing, never eat in flight.

Mindy Pelz
Yes, that's my secret. I don't eat on the flight. And then when you get to the new place, if it is still daylight, go for a run, or next morning go for a run. The extra morning, go for a walk if you cannot run. Because another thing about enjoying a new place is to go early morning, go for a walk, typically right within an hour after sunrise, because that's the time when the cities are completely empty.

Satchidananda Panda
You feel like you own this place. You are the king or the queen. You can take. Yes, I've been there. You can take nice pictures without all the tourists there.

Mindy Pelz
Yeah. So then let me just recap what you just said, because I think jet lag is really an interesting conversation because more people are traveling and it's just becoming like, we used to drive cars, now we hop on planes. So are you saying if I could, a couple of days before going to a big time zone shift, if I could start to eat in accordance to what that time zone would be like, then that could help. It's one factor that could help with the transition into that jet lag. But it's not always ideal because, for example, if you're flying from west coast to Europe, then that's a 9 hours time shift.

Satchidananda Panda
That means I have to wake up in the middle of the night. That's right. I'm doing that next. I'm doing that next week. This is why I'm doing it.

I'm doing that on this Friday.

Mindy Pelz
So I've already downloaded the app that tells me how I should be going to bed. A little different. And then I'm thinking, okay, well now in light of this, I'm like, how do I maybe put the timing of food and look at what my eating will look like when I'm there and start eating in that pattern a couple of days before I go? I mean, if you're flying to Europe, then I usually don't eat and fly because most of the flights are less than 10 hours from west coast, sometimes it's 11 hours, but then you take out 1 hour after takeoff and 1 hour before takeoff when you cannot sleep. So that leaves only eight.

Satchidananda Panda
Seven. Eight. Maximum seven to 8 hours. And that's what you should be sleeping because you should get up to catch up with your sleep. And then, to be fair, I mean, the breakfast in Europe is way much better than the food they serve.

So build up some appetite. Go have a good breakfast in Europe.

Enjoy the day. Yes. Yeah. Don't deprive yourself just to reset your circadian rhythm, is what I heard in that one. Yeah.

Mindy Pelz
Well, so that's beautiful. Okay, so the next question I have to ask you, and I'm sure people have been asking you this recently, is, you know, so much of the research I've seen you talk about and you produce and bring out into the world has been about the metabolic benefits of intermittent fasting, not just from a hemoglobin, a one c, but when we're looking at cholesterol and blood pressure and several metabolic markers. And then we have this headline, is what I'm going to call it, that came out like a month ago, that said, if you. Intermittent fast, 91% increase in cardiovascular event. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because we were flooded with questions on that. And when I looked at it, I thought, this is an exact opposition of the research I've seen you produce. So it didn't really make sense to me. Can you address that so people understand what that headline was and was it accurate and how does it tie into the research you've done? Yeah, so let's try to explain what is that research?

Satchidananda Panda
So what happens in the US almost every couple of years, there is this survey that goes out to thousands of people. They're randomly picked in a way that they represent all ethnicity, all incident, etcetera. And one of the questions there is, what did you eat yesterday and how much you ate? Not typically when you eat it, because, you know, the questionnaire is not actually optimized to accurately say when this person ate. But anyway, so they collect this information and then they also collect other information, whether the person is smoker, non smoker, all the other information, which is called enhanced, that's the short form it's done in every two years.

And that helps people to kind of look at the broad picture of what is going on with respect to health. What percentage of these people who are interviewed were obese, what percentage are healthy, what problems they have, and all that stuff that gives us a very good idea of what is the state of the health in the country. But it doesn't give us a good picture of what people ate, because more than 60% of people in those surveys, they underreport what they eat. They. Because it's very difficult.

If you ask me what I ate yesterday and all the portion size becomes very difficult to describe. On top of that, when I ate people, yeah, I ate breakfast at 08:00 or maybe they forgot. And then people are not objectively asked, when was your first calorie, when was your. So the surveys, there are a lot of studies saying that the survey is not the best way to collect nutrition information. And in fact, there is a Mayo Clinic article saying how more than 50% of people report metabolically impossible amount of food they eat.

For example, a hundred kilo person would report that he or she ate only 400 kilocalories. That's impossible. So. So there is a lot of problem with that data. So that's why that nutrition data has never been used to set policies about what, when and how much people should eat.

To be very clear, that nutrition data is rarely used to do certain policy. Second, that nutrition data is also never used to say that for the. You should eat this way to reduce the risk for other disease. So essentially, this is a garbage in, garbage out kind of analysis, because the nutrition that are collected is a very poor fault. So now, in this study, what they reported was they asked people who were eating less than 8 hours.

This is very important that they asked, did they eat whatever they reported? Was it less than 8 hours? They didn't actually say whether they were eating only one meal. Some people say that we had only one meal because maybe that day they ate one meal, or whether they, or how much they ate. There was no explicit in that abstract.

There is nothing saying that how much they ate, what they ate is just one thing, that's they ate with within less than 8 hours. And then they try to match what kind of people are dying every year. Then they try to match them to this survey, which is very indirect way of connecting who are the people who are dying in the next five or six years. And then this is called the national death Index. And then connecting with.

It's not that those specific people were dying, because those specific people are not longitudinally survived. So it was a little bit difficult to make this connection. You have to do some statistical to make that connection. And another thing was, this was not meant for public consumption. This abstract, when we go to scientific meetings, we usually put a small study and then see what people think.

People give us feedback, and then we come back to our lab and take, maybe this is not a good idea. Maybe I have to do more. So that's the purpose of scientific conferences where we submit a very small article, less than 500 words, saying, this is what we. And then sometimes we do put a poster. So that means it's like two or three figures.

Think of your high school science fair project, how people put a poster. It's almost like that. To get some feedback. And unfortunately, American Heart association decided to put it for public consumption instead of scientific discussion, in addition to scientific discussion. And then when it came out, although it's not peer reviewed by other scientists to the same rigor as any journal article is peer reviewed, and there is no scientific discussion going on.

And when it went out, people got really scared, freaked out. We got calls from our face and saying that, hey, I want to withdraw from this study because I might die. And we got the regulators, they would actually say, well, now, in light of this study, this finding, do you think that you should continue this study?

Wow. There are many scientists who got these kind of questions from their patients, the medic physicians who got a lot of questions from the patients. So that's why we had to come together and put a statement. And that statement is now circulating in social media. We put it back to American Heart association, and then we decided that we'll put this statement out there because.

Right. Because if you go back and ask the same thing, since a lot of people are under reporting their calorie, including the obese people, they actually underreport their calorie. So does it mean if you take it along that line, that that would sound like if you eat less, you may likely become obese, which is also not true. It's not. It's not cause.

Yeah, so that's why. And then if you look at what, how many people, the headline is 20,000 people study says this or something like that, right? Yep, I looked at it, but less. Than 500 people actually reported that they were eating within 8 hours, or less than 8 hours. And if you look at them, they're disproportionally more likely to be smokers.

And we know that smoking has a huge impact on heart disease, and there are many other compounds. And as I said, they never reported how many calories were they eating and why were they eating for less than 8 hours. No one means this study actually collected data from many years ago. At that time, intermittent fasting or fasting was not a thing. So the question is, why were they eating per list.

So that also brings up another issue that we have seen with respect to sleep. People say that one should sleep between six and a half to seven and a half hours. The reason is there are many studies all over the world on millions of people. Now, if we combine all the numbers showing that those people who habitually eat between six and half to seven and a half hours have significantly reduced risk for many metabolic disease and morbidities, so then the question is, well, people who sleep less, of course, we always advise them to sleep little bit more. Those who sleep 4 hours or 5 hours, we tell them sleep more.

But then the question is, who are habitually sleeping for 8 hours, 9 hours, because they feel like they have to rest that long. Professional athletes, for example, they need more than 8 hours of sleep. So are we going to tell them, hey, your chance of dying is much higher because you're sleeping more? No, because the lifestyle that the body demands that long period of sleeping, so they should sleep long. We should not ask them to reduce their sleep.

Mindy Pelz
Well said. Well said. Yes, that's a great analogy. What are your thoughts on the new weight loss drugs? Because one of the things that I keep hearing from a lot of people is that they're just not hungry.

So in some sense they're fasting and so, but then the dark side of that is sometimes they're not hungry at all and they're bringing in very little calories. Do you have any opinion on where we're going to be heading with these weight loss drugs? And the purpose of them is to improve metabolic health. But we also know intermittent fasting improves metabolic health. So where do you see it fit into this conversation?

Satchidananda Panda
I think the drugs are extremely useful because the reason why we need drug is what our lifestyle is recommended. We, some of us fail to follow that lifestyle. So, for example, for many of us, as I said, through many, many years of eating habit, we essentially change our brain in a way that our brain just wants those food. It's very difficult for us to have control over our cravings. So we cannot stop.

Or even if we know that this is not healthy, we just. We just go and have that big portion size. Because we don't, our brain doesn't get the signal that your stomach is full. So for them, it becomes very difficult to control the urge to heat. And in that way, in those cases, those who are bmi, say 35 plus, and they have tried everything and they're not losing weight, they're still having comorbidities, then it's okay to have this weight loss drug or type two diabetes drug, because these drugs were essentially initially designed for managing type two diabetes, and they have been very effective.

They can reduce hemoglobin, a one c, substantially. That is very difficult to achieve with metformin or the first line of drugs. So then the question is, well, we know that there are many side effects, loss in appetite. So that also leads to loss in total energy intake, loss in macronutrients and micronutrients. And thats spawning another industry of supplements and a specific macronutrients protein intake.

And I guess well see this going on for a while. And I think the long term studies are the long term effect, when it becomes more and more apparent, and maybe people will think twice. So, for example, there are studies showing that chronic use of this weight loss, I won't say weight loss drugs, because they may be taking for something else. For type two diabetes, the glp one receptor agonist does reduce our peristalsis motion in our gut. So gut doesn't move forward as much as it used to.

Some people develop gastroparesis, where you can say your gut goes through paralysis or something, in extreme cases. So there is indigestion, vomiting, and all that stuff that can be chronic even after you stop the talk. Although the risk is still pretty low, it's not negligible. So if there is a risk of developing this gastroparesis or this gastric effect, even 1% of people who have taken the drug for one year, and if you compound it over ten years, then maybe 10% or so, then you have to think twice to see, okay, so can you, can you manage it slightly differently? So, for example, when I talk to many physicians, they say that they try to put somebody on the lowest possible dose for a while to see how they're reacting.

And then they continue, maybe escalate this depending on the target. So most of it is actually prescribed for type two diabetes. They say the person is responding well and is stabilized. The appetite is coming back slowly than they continue. And now the second thought is, well, if they don't want to, if the patient doesn't want to stay on this drug, then can they begin with very low dose and intermittent fasting or time is eating?

And will that help them sustain the benefit of the drug without too much of the adverse side effect? I must say that this is just a thought, this is a hypothesis. I haven't seen any actual human study that has begun, but I hope somebody will start those kind of studies where the lowest possible doses, along with some form of intermittent fasting timeless eating along with healthy nutrition advice, because we have to think about the macro and micronutrient balance. And I guess that will be, that kind of study will give us some idea. Okay.

So is it good to combine these or there is no benefit? Yeah. What to stack it with? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful.

Mindy Pelz
Beautiful. Well, again, thank you for letting me pick your brain. I'm a big fan of the research that you've been doing and the message you bring. I mean, you've changed a culture in not just time restricted eating, but also in all things light. And I love this idea of movement like this.

Timing has been, I feel like, a part of the health equation that has not been talked about enough, and you've just been such a champion of it. So thank you for that. I have to finish up on my favorite question to ask everybody, which is, what is health for you? Like, if you could define health, how would you define it? Because we're all chasing health, but often we're chasing something we don't know how to define.

Satchidananda Panda
Yeah. So I always say that the best biomarker of good health is to have a good circadian rhythm. So in the sense, right, there you go. And how do you measure it? What you see a bit is, for example, when you wake up within, say, the few hours of waking up, you should have a good bowel movement, because having a regular bowel movement is the best thing for your gut health.

And I'm surprised to hear that so many young adults, particularly young women, actually don't have regular bowel movement. And then the same thing with many older adults, too. So. And then the second is, yes, after waking up and going outdoor, you should feel fully energetic, because the first half of the day is when we are really a lot of brain is a lot. We can do more complex tasks.

We can take executive decision. So that's another feeling that you should have. I'm not saying that you have to wake up at 06:00 or 07:00, whatever your habitual wake up time is from wake up time plus six to 8 hours is your most productive hours of the day. Then in the late afternoon, you should not have too much muscle pain, joint pain, aches and other stuff, because those actually limit our movement, our musculoskeletal health, which is very important. And in the late afternoon, you should feel energetic to go out, though, to have physical activity.

And then you should also have healthy hunger in the morning. In the evening, as you're winding down, you should naturally feel sleepy to go to bed. You should not be taking a sleep ed or sleeping pill, to fall asleep and to have this body's ability to sleep without any sleeping sleeping head and to be in bed, to get some restorative continuously for at least 6 hours. I say at least 6 hours because as we get older, some of us have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep for more than continuously for 6 hours. Then this is my definition of health, because once our circadian rhythms, I love that they're going, then we know that everything else falls into its right place.

Mindy Pelz
Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Well, I love all your explanations and metaphors and analogies, and I just appreciate the work you're doing. So where can people find your book?

And you have an app, like how do people find some of the really cool stuff that is available to them to interact with your work? Yeah, so I have two books now. One is the circadian code that was published few years ago, and now it has been translated in 19 or 20 different languages.

Satchidananda Panda
That's amazing. That's quite satisfying, gratifying to see. And then the second book was mostly on diabetes, because I realized that nearly half of the adults in the US are pre diabetic or diabetic. And once you get diabetes, diabetes is a very nasty disease, because once you get diabetes, then it affects almost rest of our body and brain. So how you can manage, prevent, manage diabetes, type two diabetes, particularly with circadian optimization.

That's the topic of the second book, the circadian diabetes score. And then of course, we do a lot of research, which can be very complicated for people to participate in. So that's why we synthesized all of that research around timing of food, sleep, light exposure and exercise into a simple app called on time health. And it essentially tells people to be on time with their own circadian clock. And that way they can.

Mindy Pelz
Amazing. And they don't have to do too many counting calories or counting person size. I guess what I see is once we have a good control of our time, whether it is in your personal schedule or with your health, then you have a great sense of agency that you are in control. And once you control the timing of food, then what we see, a lot of people, they feel that they are in control of the quality and quantity of their food. Similarly amazing.

Satchidananda Panda
Once you set a time to go to the gym, you just have to go to gym. You don't have to think about what you'll do, you have to think, go to gym, and then you'll find things to do and that will improve your cardiovascular health and strength training. So similarly, just keeping track of time is the first thing. I feel like the general theme of this podcast could be like, time the missing piece to a healthy lifestyle. It's so interesting to me how we talk about everything you're supposed to do, and we have left out of the equation the timing of all of that.

Mindy Pelz
So thank you for highlighting that. I think it's I think everybody's going to get a lot out of this. So appreciate you. And yeah, keep doing all the amazing work that you. Thank you so much, and have a perfect circadian day.

I will. I definitely will. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you.

If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.

Time & Light: Missing Pieces of a Healthy Lifestyle with Satchin Panda PhD

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1. Introduction to Circadian Health

2. Deep Dive into Time-Restricted Eating

3. Light's Impact and Overcoming Jet Lag

4. Q&A on Health Misconceptions

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