Summary
A short contribution to UNESCO's global sport conference on circadian rhythm in athletic performance. The timing of training, the problem of competing across time zones, and sleep understood as part of preparation rather than as what happens afterwards.
The relevant research from Dr Panda's laboratory runs in two directions. His group built a molecular atlas of exercise by tracking gene, protein and metabolite changes across more than twenty organs, establishing that the training response is whole body and time dependent. They also found that exercising with insufficient nutrition compromises organ function broadly and inverts circadian clocks through most of the brain, a finding with obvious relevance to athletes managing weight while training heavily. On travel, the alignment of the clock to local light depends on melanopsin mediated light sensing, which is what makes deliberate light exposure the main tool for resetting after long flights.
Brief, and pitched at sporting bodies rather than individual athletes.
