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0:00 Transcriber: Trang Thu Dao Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs All of us share one common goal - that is to live a long, healthy life. In fact, to live at our peak physical, emotional and intellectual performance, irrespective of age, gender or health condition is a universal human aspiration and, in fact, human right. And I am committed to the science of circadian rhythm. So that is understanding how our body is programmed to be fit for every hour of the 24 hours a day. And I want to share the insight from my research so that all of us can achieve this shared dream.
0:48 When you’re kids or teenagers, peak performance might mean to excel in sports. When we are in our 20s or 30s, we may want to stay healthy to raise a family or to be the best in whatever we do. And in our 40s and 50s, we may be striving to stay healthy to pay for a kid’s education without worrying about health care bills. And if you’re older, you may be looking forward to fulfilling your bucket list, traveling the world, or raising your grandchildren. But the truth is, most of us don’t live at our peak performance for most of our life. Why is that? Why can’t we leave a long healthy life? It’s because of the collective illnesses we have. For example, infectious diseases from flu to COVID-19,
1:35 metabolic and chronic diseases from diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer, brain conditions from depression and anxiety to dementia. And then injuries - almost all of us, nearly half of us are living with some kinds of injury to our muscles, joints and bones. And these conditions, you might think, affect only a minority of people, very few people. But the truth is, the numbers actually tell us a very sobering story. For example, in the U.S. alone, nearly half of all adults have high blood pressure. Nearly half of all adults are living with prediabetes or diabetes. And millions of people are living with or will be diagnosed in their lifetime with cancer, metabolic disease, liver disease or respiratory disease. So these health issues reduce our peak performance
2:24 and reduce years of healthy living. So that's why if we think about an ideal longevity plan, even if it's a pill, it should be so powerful, so magical so that it never was, to prevent diseases from happening if we fall sick. It should also help us to recover faster, accelerate cure, and we should come back to full functionality. You might think that this is almost impossible and it's true because right now we don’t even have a single drug that can cure diabetes and COVID-19, or obesity and injury. The best we got is Tylenol PM. It can tackle your headache, a stuffy nose, and maybe you’ll get good night’s sleep. (Laughter)
3:09 But the reality is we know that such a longevity code actually exist. And it’s actually in all of our DNA. We are pre-programmed for it, and we can start using it right now. And we call it the circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are internal timetables present in every single cell, in every organ of our body, including the brain, and the circadian rhythm also constitute the master program that guides what time of the day and night every single gene of our 20,000 genes turn on or off, and thereby every single cell and all of our organs are at peak performance. In fact, these timely activities in our body help us to prevent disease,
3:55 including to improve our immune function so that we can better fight infectious disease. They also accelerate repair mechanisms so that we can recover faster from injuries. They also optimize our brain function to improve our emotional and intellectual health. These circadian rhythms also supercharge our metabolism, detoxification and DNA repair mechanisms so that we live at a very low risk for chronic diseases. But you might wonder, well, if it is already encoded in our DNA why aren’t we living already a healthy life? The reason may be we are living out of alignment with our circadian rhythm. Think of it like this: Just like our body runs on 20,000 genes,
4:40 a typical car runs on 20,000 parts, down to the last screw. But a car today can run perfectly fine for more than 200,000 miles if we take good care of it and follow a few simple, safe driving rules. So similarly, I hope I can share six simple rules with you to take care of your “circadian car” and drive it for very long life. So the rule number one is eight hours in bed. Try to go to bed at consistent time and be in bed for eight hours so that you can get at least seven hours of restorative sleep. During sleep, our circadian clocks produce hormones and chemicals to repair and rejuvenate our brain and body. Then rule number two is to avoid eating for at least an hour in the morning.
5:29 After we get up, our organs take at least an hour to fully be awake because that’s the time when our night hormones go down and our day hormones go up, and our body is not fully prepared to properly digest food. So by avoiding food for at least an hour, we can improve digestion, and also we can have a better control over our blood glucose. And then the rule of three is time- restricted eating or intermittent fasting. This is the most important. This is the core of circadian optimization, and I’m proud that my research team at the Salk Institute almost 10 years ago discovered this revolutionary idea. So try to eat your breakfast at a consistent time every day. Because breakfast synchronizes all circadian rhythms in most of our organs.
6:19 Starting from breakfast, eat all of your meals and beverages of the day within the next eight, nine, 10 or maximum 12 hours. This pattern of eating within a consistent time and leaving somewhere between 12 to 16 hours of fasting is called time-restricted eating or now popular as intermittent fasting. This is your best way to maintain a robust circadian rhythm, and this helps in multiple ways to have a better handle on your weight, blood pressure, blood glucose, immune system, and many more. Number four is get 30 minutes of daylight. Another major breakthrough from my lab is about daylight. So step outdoors to get 30 minutes of daylight
7:07 because even on a cloudy day, staying outdoors for 30 to 60 minutes is the best way to re-synchronize our brain clock. This is the brain booster because it reduces our depression, elevates mood, and of course, daylight is the best source of vitamin D that keeps our bones healthy. The number five is daily exercise in the afternoon. Of course, everybody sort of gets their exercise. But if you're pressed for time, then try to get 30 minutes of brisk walking in the late afternoon or evening when our muscles are most efficient, and we run the lower risk of injury to our joints and ligaments. And for those of you who have prediabetes or diabetes,
7:54 exercising in the late afternoon or evening is much more efficient in controlling blood glucose than the same exercise in the morning, and then finally winding down. Two to three hours before going to bed, avoid food and dim down your light. Avoiding food for two to three hours before bedtime improves digestion and reduces acid reflux; it improves your gut health. And by dimming down light before going to bed, we actually crank up the production of our nightly hormone, including melatonin, to help you get into that restorative sleep that we all deserve. You might ask, Is that all? Does it really work? In fact, when we take care of our circadian rhythms,
8:40 then everything in our brain and body falls right into its place. And hundreds of papers in the last five to 10 years alone have shown that the core of the circadian optimization, that is intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, has enabled millions of people to improve their health, increase their performance and also help them to prevent many chronic disease. And lab animals when they’re on optimum circadian rhythm, they actually live an ideal, healthy, long lifespan we all aspire. These animals, they maintain their youthful activity and youthful fitness late into their life, with much better brain function, high muscle mass, better heart function
9:26 and they live with a lower risk for cancer and dementia. And they can also fight infection much better, and they live a long life. So even if we fall sick, nurturing your circadian rhythm can be your secret power. Take diabetes, for example; those living with pre-diabetes, if they can practice intermittent fasting, or time-restricted eating, millions of people can reverse their prediabetes and live a healthy life. And those living with diabetes, we know that diabetes slowly invites its sinister friends: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver disease, kidney disease, and many more. So under doctor's supervision, you can combine your treatment for diabetes
10:12 or its complication with optimum circadian rhythm for much better efficacy of your drugs, reduce side effect and have a peace of mind. And in fact, new research is showing timing of medication also matters. For example, people taking blood pressure medication in the evening or taking your arthritis pain medication before bedtime is much more potent in controlling these conditions than the same medication in the morning. Similarly, almost for every condition and every disease, scientists are finding that by taking medication at the right time of the day or night or scheduling your vaccination, chemo or surgery at the right time, we can make people recover faster,
11:01 healthier and with fewer adverse side effects. And in fact, if you are thinking that, well, we all can live this life, we understand that there are some barriers because we haven’t designed our world for optimum circadian rhythm. In the last 150 years after industrialization, we built our world and we are living our life without paying attention to circadian rhythms. And now that we learn the untapped power of circadian rhythm, we can redesign, rebuild the world, but we don’t have to wait for 150 years. For example, we can redesign our homes, hospitals, colleges and retirement homes to mimic bright daylight
11:49 and darker night to support brain circadian rhythm. Similarly, we can optimize tools and appliances that surround us so that they can support our own circadian rhythm and then smart automation. And having robots in assembly line or in many critical places, we can reduce the burden of night-shift work or evening-shift work, which is the biggest threat to circadian rhythm. We can have new diagnostic and new wearables that can accurately measure rhythms and also help us optimize so that we can improve our performance. And finally, we are also working with other scientists and industry partners to slowly develop public policies and guidelines to optimize when our schools should start,
12:36 and when we should be working, and daylight saving time. And finally, science-based approach to shift work. And we hope that we all can work together to build a world where everybody is enabled to achieve their full potential. And I hope at least from now on, most of us can follow these six simple rules I shared with you for a long journey to a long life. Thank you and have a perfect circadian day. (Applause) (Cheers)
