Is there a relationship between sleeping and eating? Can binge eating disorder be a circadian disorder?
Research carried out by scientists from the National University of Quilmes (UNQ), which was published in the international journal Frontiers , focuses on the importance of evaluating circadian profiles in people who suffer from this type of eating disorder.
Circadian rhythms are understood to be those biological rhythms that repeat at intervals with a certain periodicity, and whose unit of measurement is approximately one day. Consequently, they regulate the body, including appetite and sleep.
The work, carried out within the framework of the UNQ Chronobiology Laboratory, emphasizes being able to differentiate the wide range of eating disorders that range from restrictive eating patterns, such as anorexia nervosa, to the spectrum of compulsive eating, such as bulimia nervosa. , night eating syndrome and binge eating disorder, since many aspects of these disorders are modulated by the circadian system, such as meal timing, mood, compulsive behavior and sleep quality.
In this direction, the work focuses on a bibliographic review that explores the main physiological aspects controlled by the circadian system that affect or are affected by binge eating disorder, and how the circadian system can play an important role in the development of new studies. .
What is binge eating disorder?
In dialogue with the UNQ Scientific News Agency, Santiago Plano , researcher at the UNQ Chronobiology Laboratory and one of the authors of the work, explains it like this: “It is an eating disorder that, defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are characterized by episodes of compulsive eating, that is, eating a large amount of food in a short period of time. And, above all, the loss of control over this intake, which has a very large impulsive component.”
As detailed, binge eating disorder used to be diagnosed as a subtype of bulimia nervosa but was later recognized as a disorder with its own entity due to its differences. People who suffer from this disorder do not self-induce vomiting, do not use diuretics or laxatives, do not engage in intense exercise or any other compensatory behavior, which is why they have high rates of obesity.
For the specialist, binge eating has different characteristics that are controlled by the circadian clock. “One is compulsivity , which leads the person to addictive behavior. But they are also associated with different sleep disorders ”, He assures. And he exemplifies: “There is an effect like that of the snake that bites its tail, in which patients sleep poorly at night because they binge during the night.
That is, they wake up with this urge to go eat; and that reinforces poor sleep, and what is called circadian disorders.”
The clock that speaks to the body
The circadian system controls different bodily functions cyclically throughout the day. It is like a clock that tells the body what time it is and what it has to do to synchronize it with the environment and so that the body can act preventively in events that are going to occur in each person’s environment. What happens when that clock is out of phase with the environment and behavior? A circadian disorder occurs.
At that moment “is when you begin to see that there may be a link between circadian disorders and binge eating disorder. Or there may be a two-way, a communication, between circadian disorders and binge eating disorder, where they feed off each other,” says Plano.
The author explains that to carry out the research they focused on two circadian disorders: being up at a time when the body is mostly prepared to sleep and eating at times when the body is not prepared to receive food. “The intake of many calories at night predisposes the body, puts a load of metabolic tasks on it that it has to perform to assimilate those foods, which are not typical of the night, and they shift the schedule and feed back on this circadian disorder. This is when the idea appears that binge eating disorder could be caused by or reinforcing a circadian disorder.”
A look from chronobiology
"For some time now, the concept of chrononutrition has been in vogue, that is, the importance of the schedule to consider eating, with healthy nutrition and even for the prevention of some metabolic diseases such as overweight and obesity," Diego Golombek , PhD in Biology and director of the UNQ Chronobiology Laboratory, tells the UNQ Scientific News Agency .
And he adds that within this, “we also have extremes: the group of patients who binge eat, that is, who eat without a reasonable limit.” In that sense, he maintains that the definition of binge eating per se is not clear. And the question arises: Is it just the intention and the reward for a massive intake or is it related to a time of day, to a person’s chronotype, that is, if they are more morning people than evening people, and to the circadian clock? “This is what we consider at work,” he highlights.
In that direction, he clarifies that the research is, basically, a call for more research to determine whether the concept of binge eating, that is, the excessive intake of food in a certain or small amount of time, is related to the circadian clock.
“The idea is that if we can strengthen the circadian system and get it out of that vicious circle, we could strengthen the therapeutics for binge eating syndrome, because obesity and the sleep disorders that partly characterize binge eating syndrome have a strong circadian component. Our study seeks to incorporate this vision for diagnosis and therapy,” concludes Plano.
