Harness Your Circadian Rhythm: Health & Longevity (EP 280)

This is the foundational episode of the pair Dr Panda recorded with Simon Hill, an introduction to circadian rhythm for listeners meeting the field for the first time. It covers what the clock actually is, where it sits both in the brain and in every peripheral organ, and how it gets set by the two cues that reach it most reliably, which are light and food.

Dr Panda's own contributions run through the material. His early work linked NAD metabolism to the pace of the clock, and later studies implicated the ROR nuclear hormone receptors and chromatin regulation in keeping that pace stable, findings that tied metabolism and immune function directly to timekeeping. The picture that emerges is of a clock that is not a single organ but a distributed system, which is why disruption shows up almost everywhere.

The second half connects that system to the diseases of ageing. Healthy rhythms reduce risk across inflammation, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia. Conversely, those diseases dampen the rhythms further. That two way street is the core of the argument for treating circadian health as part of a longevity strategy.