The Circadian Rhythm and Your Biological Clock

Gabrielle Lyon's muscle centric view of medicine meets Dr Panda's work on timing, and the combination produces a more nuanced conversation than either subject gets alone. Both the clock and skeletal muscle are systems that respond to when things happen, not only to what and how much.

The discussion covers what the biological clock is and how it is set, with light reaching the brain's pacemaker through melanopsin and feeding setting the clocks in liver, gut and muscle, before turning to the tension Lyon is most interested in. A shorter eating window can make it harder to reach adequate protein, and muscle has its own daily rhythms of synthesis and breakdown. How those two facts interact is a live question rather than a settled one.

There is also material from Dr Panda's group on how exercise changes gene expression and epigenetic marks in muscle, and on what happens when training outruns nutrition. A good listen for anyone trying to reconcile time-restricted eating with strength training.