Eating at night can allow you to run longer while strengthening your muscles

The researchers selected 30 mice to be fed a grain-containing diet for three weeks. These rats were examined during a twelve-hour period when the lights were on or a twelve-hour period when the lights were off. Sixteen other rats were allowed to eat at their own time during the same time period.

Using a treadmill, the research team found mice that only ate during the day ran twice as fast as mice that only ate at night or at their own time.

According to Li, analysis of the leg muscles of the mice showed that the group that was fed during the day had more of a type of muscle fiber used for endurance running than the others. This issue explains well the reason for the observed differences between these two groups.

Further analysis of samples extracted from mice showed that eating during the day was also associated with lower levels of a protein called “perilipin-5”. To test whether this could be the reason for the mice’s greater endurance, the research team conducted a study on another group of mice.

In this study, researchers genetically edited mice so that this protein does not exist in their bodies. Then, they were allowed to eat whenever they wanted. Performing a treadmill test on these mice and analyzing their muscles showed that the high endurance of mice in running after feeding during the day is due to low levels of prilipin-5.

Considering that mice are nocturnal, the equivalent behavior in humans can be that they eat at night, or perhaps by consuming less food at the beginning of the day, they eat an elaborate meal at night right before sleep; Of course, according to Lee, this should be tested on humans.

The researchers did not measure the effect of resting eating on the mice’s risk of developing diabetes or fatty liver; Although Lee says that in the future, researchers plan to examine the effects of this way of eating on organs beyond skeletal muscle.

According to Lee, if people make night eating a temporary habit before a big race, for example, they are less likely to experience the long-term negative effects of repeating the habit. Needless to say, he emphasizes that more experiments are needed to ultimately confirm this possibility.

Mindian Li also emphasizes that it is possible that this dietary change works if it is followed for a few months (equivalent to three weeks for humans in mice) or if it is followed in the short term and until endurance is needed instead of a long period of time. Is.

In addition, Li believes that this method could potentially help treat aging in predisposed individuals to have greater muscular endurance. Julian Zairat “These results, while exciting, need to be tested on humans,” says Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

According to Zairat, one of the limitations of the recent study is that the mice were fed a grain-based diet, which is in no way the diet that humans normally eat. Due to the existence of such a difference, it is possible that if more varied meals are used, this eating style will have different effects.