Why When You Eat Matters, Part 1 (#21)

The first half of Dr Panda's early two part conversation with Rangan Chatterjee, and one of the best places to start with his work. It sets out the central claim plainly. The clock running in each of your organs is as relevant to your health as the contents of your diet, and most of us treat it as though it does not exist.

Dr Panda explains where the idea came from and how it was tested. Mice normally eat at night, so the question was what would happen if they were fed during the day instead. The answer, that the liver clock followed the food rather than the light the eyes were seeing, turned meal timing into a circadian input. Follow up work showed that animals eating the same calories inside a consistent window were protected against disease that affected animals grazing around the clock.

Chatterjee is a good interlocutor for this material because he keeps asking what it means for a patient in a consulting room. Listen to this before part two, which handles the practicalities.