Gut Circadian Rhythm: How to Restore Your Biological Clock

Our circadian rhythm acts as the body’s master clock, coordinating the timing of biological processes across organs and cells. Each organ, including the gut, has its own local clock that syncs with the brain’s central clock. Gut bacteria follow their own daily patterns and in turn help regulate digestion, hormones, and the body’s internal rhythms. This two-way relationship means maintaining a healthy gut microbiome supports a balanced circadian rhythm and overall welll well-being. The body’s internal circadian rhythm acts as a master clock, timing the release of sleep hormones and aligning sleep patterns with the natural cycle of day and night.

What is Circadian Rhythm?

 Our circadian rhythm does more than regulate our our sleep cycle.—it acts as the body’s 24-hour schedule of biological functions. At the top of this timekeeping hierarchy sits the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus. 1 Each SCN contains about 10,000 neurons that send timing signals to peripheral clocks found in nearly every organ and cell, ensuring the body’s rhythms remain coordinated. 2

What Controls Our Circadian Rhythm?

There are several factors at play that may impact our circadian rhythm. Many of them are parts of our environment. Others are lifestyle choices. Let’s take a look at what may affect our biological clock and gut circadian rhythm.

Light

Light is the primary regulator of our circadian rhythm 3. Our body knows that when the sun is out, we must be productive and expend the most energy. It’s also aware that the nighttime is when you go to bed.

As sunlight enters the bedroom in wee morning hours, the ultraviolet rays permeate our eyelids and activate our pineal gland. This reaction causes the body to stop producing so much melatonin. When the sun goes down, that charge drops, and melatonin production commences.

Sleep Cycles

One of the best ways to foster new habits is to do these activities at the same time every day. Our bodies are built to thrive in repetitive sequences. So, when your sleep cycles are thrown off, it messes up the whole shebang.

Perhaps the most significant assault on our sleep patterns is the blue LED lights in our smart devices and TV screens. Too much screen time sends false signals to the brain.

Your pineal gland records these blue wavelengths as the sun rising, causing you to feel less tired. Inevitably, erratic sleep will throw off your gut circadian rhythm.

Temperature

Our body temperature fluctuates throughout the day. Your cells have thermoreceptors on them 4. These are gauges that measure the temperatures outside the body. It figures out the average temperature for the time of the day so our SCN can prepare us for nighttime.

When our temperatures get thrown off, so does circadian rhythms. Colder days may make us feel lethargic earlier, while hotter ones might cause a sleepless night. Therefore, exceedingly cold or warm days can disrupt your sleep cycle, hormone production, and gut bacteria. Overall, maintaining environmental and body temperature consistency supports healthy circadian rhythms and sleep cycles

Food Intake

According to the Medical Research Council in Science Daily,

“Experiments in cultured cells, and replicated in mice, show that insulin, a hormone released when we eat, adjusts circadian rhythms in many different cells and tissues individually, by stimulating production of a protein called PERIOD, an essential cog within every cell’s circadian clock 5. “

– Medical Research Council

There’s nothing worse than trying to sleep next to a horrible neighbor. Our body is teeming with trillions of microbes. When most of these gut bacteria are beneficial, the surrounding cells that report back to the SCN leave good Yelp! reviews.

However, pathogenic bacteria can be disruptive. They promote inflammation that destroys healthy cells. Many peripheral clocks in the neighboring area will report back to the system, inevitably shocking our circadian rhythm.

What is the Gut Circadian Rhythm?

In our microbiome, all of our cells are working in unison to achieve betterment for the whole. Different cells have their own set of strengths and weaknesses that are determined by where they are in the body. So, each “department” needs 24 hours to accomplish these tasks. Let’s go to another analogy.

The SCN is the CEO of the company. It has many key peripheral clocks that are in vital organs and regions, such as our pancreas, liver, and gut. Each of the cells distinct to these areas has its own 24-hour process to undergo.

Not meeting their deadline will cause a negative report turned into the SCN. Anyone ever feel the wrath of an unhappy CEO? Not pretty. Let’s take a look at components of the gut circadian rhythm.

Metabolism

Research with mice suggests that the SCN sets a rhythm with benchmarks that microbes must follow to ensure the 24 hours’ worth of tasks is completed. At specified times, gut bacteria will induce the expression of histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) 6.

Even more remarkable is that the microbes only activate HDAC3 in epithelial cells of the small intestine but not the colon. This realization further exemplifies that stomach bacteria know how to manipulate the gut circadian rhythm.

Gut Motility

Gut motility is the stretching and contracting of muscles in the GI tract.

Your GI tract covers:

• Mouth
• Esophagus (or food tube)
• Stomach
• Small Intestine
• Large Intestine
• Colon/Bowels

When you begin eating, the aroma of your food trigger saliva production, kicking off the digestion process. All systems get moving, and your GI tract gets in sync through a process known as peristalsis 7. That’s just a fancy way to explain a smaller-scale gut circadian rhythm!

Harmful gut bacteria and opportunistic gut flora destroy tight junctions that regulate our gut barrier and villi that help us absorb nutrients. Therefore, we’re more susceptible to toxins and solid food particles from our intestines that cause GI problems, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

Diet and Gut Circadian Rhythm

The toughest obstacle facing our gut circadian rhythm is the food we eat. A Standard American Diet (SAD) is rich in omega-6 fatty acids and nutrient-deficient carbohydrates. Research confirms an influx of these dietary choices can severely alter your gut circadian rhythm.

One study fed a high-fat, high-carb diet rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and refined sugars to mice 8. Notably, the gut bacteria changed the production times and yield of metabolites. Without gut bacteria producing useful gut healers like butyrate, our lining gets compromised, as does our gut circadian rhythm.

Inevitably, the mice developed:

• Dysfunctional Glucose Homeostasis
• Hypercholesterolemia
• Obesity

These disorders are all common for people who follow a typical Western Diet. One of the most prominent, obesity, is heavily linked to insomnia 9. Insomnia is a clear indicator your circadian rhythm is out of whack and you are lacking needed sleep.

Therefore, having an out-of-sync gut circadian rhythm can mess up all the biological processes going on in the body. Ultimately, this lack of sleep can cause a person to develop a litany of diseases.

The first step in getting your metabolism and sleep cycle back on track is to get your gut bacteria in check. An easy way to accomplish this task is to change your diet, lifestyle influencers and finding out which gut bacteria are holding your gut biome hostage. Do this with an Ombre Gut Health Test.

Once we know which gut bacteria are disputing your gut circadian rhythm, we can recommend foods that nourish sleep promoting bacteria and probiotic bacteria to help bring balance back in favor. From there, Ombre will provide lifestyle education as well to keep that biological clock ticking!

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