Late night meals might disrupt your memory According to in-lab testing, mice that had odd eating schedules were known to spend more time looking and observing objects that they already knew and were familiar with as compared to the mice that ate on a scheduled routine. The hectic pace of life these days and the traditional twenty first century lifestyle would often compel you to consume food at odd timings. Mid-night cravings are very common among people these days. However, if the above in-lab test is true for humans too, we’re actually putting ourselves in trouble. The study shows that if rats ate in their sleep timings, they were likely to experience an impaired memory, even if they got the same amount of sleep when compared with mice that ate timely. It has already been proven that humans alike many other animals have internal clocks that make the body function in accordance with the sunset, sunrise and hence, the cycles of light and dark. These are also called circadian rhythms and have been proven by many other eastern customs such as the vedic customs from Hinduism and the readings of Taoism. Hence, it is safe to assume that if we schedule our eating and sleeping properly, we might even experience better memory. Not only can this affect memory, but scientists say that the disrupted sleeping and eating cycles can affect cognition and decision-making as well. To find out the magnitude of the affect, a team of researchers acclimatized the rodents to a normal schedule of sleep (Mice are nocturnal, so they sleep during the day while they are awake at night). Of these animals, they allowed a few of them to only eat during the time when they were about to sleep, while the others were given food within the awake time. The ones who were given food during their sleep timings automatically adjusted their schedules according to their eating timings and started to sleep late. The rodents who had a disrupted eating schedule also had a shifted sleep cycle. However, they slept for the same number of hours and ate the same quantity of food as the ones with the proper sleep cycle. Next, their memory was tested when they put a mouse in a box with two objects. They allowed it to explore. Similar was done with a mouse with the shifted schedule. Compared with the mice with the aligned eating and sleeping schedule, the ones with the shifted eating and sleeping schedules took longer to explore each object. The same experiment was repeated with different samples, which depicted a similar behavior. The ones with disrupted nutrition and sleep timings took longer to observe.
Related Article: http://www.researchomatic.com/New-Research/Meal-Plan-104075.html