(Image source from: The News Now)

Following a humble lifestyle such as intake of all food within 10 hours can reinstate balance, stave off metabolic diseases and uphold health, suggests a study led by one of an Indian-origin.

The study, led over mice, suggests that the health glitches associated with disruptions to animals' 24-hour rhythms of activity and rest - which in humans is linked to eating for most of the day or doing shift work - can be modified by consuming all calories within a 10-hour gap.

"For many of us, the day begins with a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and ends with a bedtime snack 14 or 15 hours later," said Satchidananda Panda, Professor at the Salk Institute.

"But restricting food intake to 10 hours a day, and fasting the rest, can lead to better health, regardless of our biological clock," he added.

The researchers demonstrated that the circadian clocks strike a balance between adequate nutrition during the fed state and essential repair or transformation during fasting.

When this internal timepiece is disturbed, as once people do shift work, or when it is compromised due to hereditary flaws, the balance breaks down and diseases come to stay.

The study appeared in the journal Cell Metabolism.

For the study, the team incapacitated the genes accountable for maintaining the biological clock in mice, including in the liver, which controls many metabolic functions.

They at that time put the mice on one of two high-fat diet regimes: one group had access to food around the clock, the other had access to the similar amount of calories only through a 10-hour window.

As predicted, the group that could eat at any time became obese and developed metabolic diseases.

But then the group that ate the similar number of calories within a 10-hour window endured lean and fit - in spite of not having an internal "biological clock" and thus genetically programmed to be morbidly sick.

"Many of us may have one or more disease-causing defective genes that make us feel helpless and destined to be sick. The finding that a good lifestyle can beat the bad effects of defective genes opens new hope to stay healthy," Panda said.

By Sowmya Sangam