Does toothpaste break the fast when time-restricting your eating?
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That first bite of food that we take after an overnight fast signals the body's circadian clocks to begin their day. But what about other things we might put in our mouth, such as toothpaste? As long as we don't swallow, the use of toothpaste should raise no concerns. In this clip, Dr. Satchin Panda quells concerns that toothpaste might start the circadian clock.
- Rhonda: You know, a lot of people just really...they want to do time-restricted eating and they want to do it right.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: And so, you know, some of these questions can be a little silly, but it just shows how people are thinking. Like, for example, does toothpaste start the clock?
- Satchin: If they're not swallowing.
- Rhonda: So if you're not swallowing it, probably not starting the clock.
- Satchin: Yeah. Yeah. It's not starting, it's actually resetting the clock.
- Rhonda: Resetting.
- Satchin: So I think we have to also think of time-restricted feeding, although we came from a circadian clock lab. So that's why we always get connected with circadian clock. But time-restricted eating has also feeding, fasting, that whole physiology type to it. So the other way to ask the question is, "Does brushing your teeth or mouthwash break the traditional definition of fasting?" And definitely it's not breaking that, it's not putting food in your stomach so that the stomach will start processing it and insulin starts going up slightly and blood glucose going up. So in that way we ought to keep in mind that we're bringing that definition back once in a while. No, it does not break that fast.
- Rhonda: I think that's a good way to explain it.
The body’s 24-hour cycles of biological, hormonal, and behavioral patterns. Circadian rhythms modulate a wide array of physiological processes, including the body’s production of hormones that regulate sleep, hunger, metabolism, and others, ultimately influencing body weight, performance, and susceptibility to disease. As much as 80 percent of gene expression in mammals is under circadian control, including genes in the brain, liver, and muscle.[1] Consequently, circadian rhythmicity may have profound implications for human healthspan.
- ^ Dkhissi-Benyahya, Ouria; Chang, Max; Mure, Ludovic S; Benegiamo, Giorgia; Panda, Satchidananda; Le, Hiep D., et al. (2018). Diurnal Transcriptome Atlas Of A Primate Across Major Neural And Peripheral Tissues Science 359, 6381.
A peptide hormone secreted by the beta cells of the pancreatic islets cells. Insulin maintains normal blood glucose levels by facilitating the uptake of glucose into cells; regulating carbohydrate, lipid, and protein metabolism; and promoting cell division and growth. Insulin resistance, a characteristic of type 2 diabetes, is a condition in which normal insulin levels do not produce a biological response, which can lead to high blood glucose levels.
Restricting the timing of food intake to certain hours of the day (typically within an 8- to 12-hour time window that begins with the first food or non-water drink) without an overt attempt to reduce caloric intake. TRE is a type of intermittent fasting. It may trigger some beneficial health effects, such as reduced fat mass, increased lean muscle mass, reduced inflammation, improved heart function with age, increased mitochondrial volume, ketone body production, improved repair processes, and aerobic endurance improvements. Some of these effects still need to be replicated in human trials.
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