How do supplements and exercise training affect timing-restricted eating? | Satchin Panda
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Although many beneficial effects of time-restricted eating in humans have been identified, many questions still remain, especially with regard to the timing of dietary supplement intake and exercise. A person with a known deficiency who takes a supplement will undoubtedly see improvements in their health, but whether the timing of that supplement matters is unknown. Similarly, the timing of eating and exercise, especially in elite athletes, has not been studied and may, in fact, require self-experimentation by the athletes as they find the perfect interval of fasting to support their optimal performance. In this clip, Dr. Satchin Panda discusses the limited data available today regarding dietary supplement usage, exercise, and time-restricted eating.
- Rhonda: But, you know, people are asking about things, like even supplements. And I think, like, you know, again, you've answered that we don't, you know... You know, are you taking fish oil? Is it a fatty acid? I mean maybe... There's lots of things here because that is, you know... So if you're taking a fish oil supplement, then what do you think? That's different than taking, for example, vitamin D?
- Satchin: Well, it's a question of... I like to compare this to, say, physical activity. Somebody is completely sedentary. For that person going for a walk, whether it's in the morning or evening or midnight doesn't matter because this person is getting some benefit of physical activity. Similarly, if somebody is very low on vitamin D or needs that fish oil supplement, then what time the person takes doesn't matter because that deficiency is getting corrected.
- Rhonda: Yeah, that's true.
- Satchin: So that's true. But then if someone now dials it slightly higher and says, "Well, you know, I want to have this protein drink that's 25 grams of protein after my exercise late at night. Is it okay?" Then that's where I'll say, "Well, then that's going to affect your gluconeogenesis and muscle recovery. And maybe if you have done a very strenuous exercise, if you're training for, like, Ironman or something like that, yes, you have to have that to recovery.
- Rhonda: Yeah. So that was actually a question I think people were... Someone was asking about weight training at night, if that would counter. If they, you know, eat late at night after weight training, if that would counter. And I think that's kind of pushing it a little bit.
- Satchin: Yeah, that's pushing a little bit.
- Rhonda: Which is kind of what you're saying.
- Satchin: And, again, it depends on your training schedule and other stuff, what do you want to get the most out of it. Like, for example, if you're used to training late at night and having that protein and carb drink right after that, what if you do a little self-experimentation and move that to, say, 5:00 or 6:00 and see whether it actually helps you do one extra pushup or to go for another five minutes, or is it actually compromising your performance. So, again, it's very personal. And then some of these very kind of athletes who are pushing themselves to the limit, they want to squeeze the last drop of performance out of it. And for them I think self-experimentation is the best way because there is no way we as scientists, we can do that kind of study in our labs with a number of subjects who are as competent as them, and then controlling for everything. So it would be very difficult.
- Rhonda: But you did show in one of your animal studies that a shorter feeding window for these animals, like, for example, nine hours...or it was eight or nine hours.
- Satchin: Eight to nine, both of them.
- Rhonda: Endurance...
- Satchin: Endurance went up.
- Rhonda: ...performance went up. So you do have some evidence of being able to squeeze the last drop of performance maybe.
- Satchin: Yeah. So that way you clearly see endurance went up. And the reason why we did that experiment was we thought, "Well, if the mice are feeling fasted for a long time, will their athletic performance or muscle performance go down?" Because our worry was their performance, athletic performance, might go down. And in that way it might be harmful for some people for whom physical activity is needed. And, for example, many shift workers, they need that physical performance.
- Rhonda: Right.
- Satchin: That's why we did it.
- Rhonda: And we realized that their grip strength, which is similar to how much weight a person can lift, that did not change, that stayed the same. But the endurance, being on the treadmill for a long time, that actually significantly increased, and in some cases it doubles.
- Rhonda: Doubles?
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: I've noticed this in myself. I've done, like, an eight or nine-hour eating, you know, schedule and the next day... So if I'm fasting for a longer period, the next day I go for a run in the morning and my endurance is... And this is, I mean, we're talking like five or six times, maybe seven times I've noticed it.
- Satchin: Yeah, yeah.
- Rhonda: I mean it's a clear pattern.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: My endurance is dramatically improved. I mean it's incredible, like, I just can keep running. Like, whereas usually I'm tired and I reach the mark where I'm like, "Okay, this is it, finally I'm getting"... You know, you kind of sprint to the end and now I just keep going.
- Satchin: Yeah. No, we see that. There are many people who have given us this feedback that their endurance does go up. And then what is interesting is, again, their endurance improves, and then once in a while they say, "Well, I can go back to 12 hours," and then immediately they see the reversal of that endurance.
- Rhonda: Right. It does, exactly. It totally reverses, yeah.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: You know, I know there's been some recent studies coming out in the last year or so where exogenous ketone bodies have been given to endurance athletes and it improved their endurance capacity. Which makes sense because endurance heavily relies on mitochondria. Right? So, I mean, it completely... I mean if that's actually part of the mechanism with the time-restricted eating in terms of a longer faster period one would presume would have higher levels of ketone bodies.
- Satchin: Yeah, we do see they have a slightly higher level of ketone bodies.
- Rhonda: So it makes sense.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: Whereas... Well, I don't know what exactly you're doing with the grip strength, but, you know, it depends on whether or not if you're pushing them to a high enough intensity where they're becoming glycolytic or not. I don't know.
- Satchin: Yeah. So, again, we don't know where the dynamic range of that particular assay and we can't ask questions to mice. So this is where people who are actually lifting weights are doing something, a very different kind of exercise. Endurance exercise versus intense exercise, those are very different. Maybe they can give us feedback to see what happens.
- Rhonda: Now in your study wasn't there improved lean muscle mass?
- Satchin: Yes, we did see lean muscle mass improvement only on mice that were given standard diet, not on high fat diet.
- Rhonda: Okay.
- Satchin: The high fat diet fed mice...
- Rhonda: Yeah, I wouldn't expect for them. So they were given...so the mice that were given the normal, sort of healthier diet.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: What was their eating schedule?
- Satchin: They were eight to nine hours.
- Rhonda: So it was a shorter time window they were eating?
- Satchin: Yeah, yeah yeah.
- Rhonda: They had increased lean muscle mass. Now is that something, like, do you know why that is? Has that been looked at?
- Satchin: We actually don't understand that, that's another thing. But we do see there is an increase in PGC-1 expression in muscle, so there might be an increase in mitochondria function. But surprisingly in the same mice we saw there is less glycogen in muscle. And that's kind of counterintuitive. You might think that, "Well, the muscles may be loaded with glycogen, so that's why their lean mass went up." But at the same time what we think is maybe, because they have less glycogen, we know that if the muscle has less glycogen than after normal activity, then glycogen may be completely depleted. And when they eat, they have a much better feeding response. So that means a much better glycogen synthesis response. So they may be making and breaking glycogen, making and breaking triglyceride on a daily basis, or protein on a daily basis. So in that way I think they may be maintaining much better muscle health. Because they're also going through some gluconeogenesis, they're breaking down some protein. So maybe some of the structural proteins that get modified and maybe they get damaged, they're kind of getting cleansed, they're getting cleaned out of the system by this eating and fasting rhythm. So, again, it's all speculation, so we have to go back to the muscle samples.
- Rhonda: Yeah. You have the data, you just don't know the mechanism.
- Satchin: We don't know the mechanism.
- Rhonda: But people are very interested. I mean increasing lean muscle mass is hard to do and there's a lot of huge interest in it.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: Huge interest.
- Satchin: No, actually we have been seeing this reproducibly now in multiple strains of mice. And it happens with a balanced diet. So this is where the nutrition quality does...
- Rhonda: Play a role.
- Satchin: ...play a role.
- Rhonda: Which makes sense.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: Yeah.
- Satchin: So we can't expect people to eat the same fatty food and expect lean muscle mass.
- Rhonda: Right, yeah. So there's a nutritional component to it in addition to eating within a restricted time window.
- Satchin: Yeah.
- Rhonda: Which completely makes sense.
- Satchin: Yeah.
A test used in laboratory medicine, pharmacology, environmental biology, and molecular biology to determine the content or quality of specific components.
Important for the endocrine enhancing properties of exercise. Exerkines are exercise-induced hormonal-like factors which mediate the systemic benefits of exercise through autocrine, paracrine, and/or endocrine properties.[1]
- ^ Helge, Jørn Wulff; Moritz, Thomas; Morville, Thomas; Clemmensen, Christoffer; Dela, Flemming (2020). Plasma Metabolome Profiling Of Resistance Exercise And Endurance Exercise In Humans Cell Reports 33, 13.
A molecule composed of carboxylic acid with a long hydrocarbon chain that is either saturated or unsaturated. Fatty acids are important components of cell membranes and are key sources of fuel because they yield large quantities of ATP when metabolized. Most cells can use either glucose or fatty acids for this purpose.
A metabolic pathway in which the liver produces glucose from non-carbohydrate substrates including glycogenic amino acids (from protein) and glycerol (from lipids).
A highly branched chain of glucose molecules that serves as a reserve energy form in mammals. Glycogen is stored primarily in the liver and muscles, with smaller amounts stored in the kidneys, brain, and white blood cells. The amount stored is influenced by factors such as physical training, basal metabolic rate (BMR), and eating habits.
Molecules (often simply called “ketones”) produced by the liver during the breakdown of fatty acids. Ketone production occurs during periods of low food intake (fasting), carbohydrate restrictive diets, starvation, or prolonged intense exercise. There are three types of ketone bodies: acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and acetone. Ketone bodies are readily used as energy by a diverse array of cell types, including neurons.
Tiny organelles inside cells that produce energy in the presence of oxygen. Mitochondria are referred to as the "powerhouses of the cell" because of their role in the production of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). Mitochondria are continuously undergoing a process of self-renewal known as mitophagy in order to repair damage that occurs during their energy-generating activities.
The master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis. PGC-1α is activated in human skeletal muscle in response to endurance exercise. It is strongly induced by cold exposure, linking this environmental stimulus to adaptive thermogenesis. PGC-1a has been implicated as a potential therapy for Parkinson's disease by conferring protective effects on mitochondrial metabolism.
A person who works on a schedule outside the traditional 9 AM – 5 PM day. Work can involve evening or night shifts, early morning shifts, and rotating shifts. Many industries rely heavily on shift work, and millions of people work in jobs that require shift schedules.
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.
A molecule composed of a glycerol molecule bound to three fatty acids. Triglycerides are the primary component of very-low-density lipoproteins (VLDL). They serve as a source of energy. Triglycerides are metabolized in the intestine, absorbed by intestinal cells, and combined with cholesterol and proteins to form chylomicrons, which are transported in lymph to the bloodstream.
A fat-soluble vitamin stored in the liver and fatty tissues. Vitamin D plays key roles in several physiological processes, such as the regulation of blood pressure, calcium homeostasis, immune function, and the regulation of cell growth. In the skin, vitamin D decreases proliferation and enhances differentiation. Vitamin D synthesis begins when 7-dehydrocholesterol, which is found primarily in the skin’s epidermal layer, reacts to ultraviolet light and converts to vitamin D. Subsequent processes convert D to calcitriol, the active form of the vitamin. Vitamin D can be obtained from dietary sources, too, such as salmon, mushrooms, and many fortified foods.
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