Is time-restricted eating okay for kids?
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The suprachiasmatic nucleus – the region of the brain that controls the body's master clock – is not fully developed in infants. But as a child reaches toddlerhood and can begin to sleep long periods overnight, implementing regular eating and sleeping patterns is important in order to set the child up for optimal health in later life. In this clip, Dr. Satchin Panda describes the maturation schedule of the body's circadian clocks and makes recommendations about when to start time-restricted eating in children.
- Rhonda: Another thing people are asking about is when can you start a TRE schedule in a person's life, like developmentally.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: Can you start as a toddler? Is that too early?
- Satchin: I think, yeah, so we know that in newborn the suprachiasmatic nucleus is not even fully developed and it may not be even fully connected to the rest of the body. And that makes sense because the babies are going through a very rapid growth phase. And what they need at that time is a lot of nutrition and growth. So TRE may not be desirable at that time, not at all. In fact, since it can trigger adverse effects, so I won't recommend. I think a rule of thumb is when babies or toddlers begin to sleep eight to nine hours continuously through a night anyway, now their physiology or their sleep pattern is already getting used to being without food for seven to eight and maybe nine hours. And that maybe a time when at least one can begin the first term phase of time-restricted eating. That is to start with a schedule, a well-defined morning breakfast time and the last meal, or even bedtime. So recently there was a study done in England saying that babies were having a very regular scheduled bedtime and also last meal, protected from childhood obesity even five, six, seven years down the road. So although they did not measure when these babies were eating and all that stuff, what I think is having a regular bedtime itself is a very strong timing cue that these babies are going to bed at a certain time and most babies will sleep for 8, 9, even 10 hours. So they're already into 10 hours of fasting just through their sleep. And then it takes an hour for them to get up and then get ready and then start eating. Or for some babies they may finish eating, and then they're reading a book or something and somebody is reading them a storybook. So you'd add that one hour between the last food and going to bed. So in that way I think the rule of thumb would be when babies start to sleep for eight to nine hours continuously, then that would be a good time to start putting them to bed at a fixed time. And then the next thing would be giving them breakfast at the same time every day, or having the last meal or the dinner time fixed. So then their body gets used to it. And then by the time they're in elementary school it will be easy for them to adopt a 12 hours eating time, and then if they want maybe they can go down to 10 or 12. So that itself is a very good limit on them. So in that way, I think, it's a very clear example that TRE is something that you can start very early on and it can be a lifelong habit.
- Rhonda: Excellent.
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 tiny region located in the hypothalamus responsible for controlling circadian rhythms. The SCN maintains control across the body by synchronizing "slave oscillators," which exhibit their own near-24-hour rhythms and control circadian phenomena in local tissue.
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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