The Power of Science
Lecture Series

Sandy Liarakos:
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for today’s program, Circadian Rhythms during this time of social distancing, as part of Salk’s new Lecture Series, The Power of Science. I’m Sandy Liarakos, Senior Director of External Relations, and I’m pleased to be your moderator for today’s program. Thank you for taking time to spend the next hour with us to hear firsthand from Dr. Satchin Panda. We will begin our program today with a welcome from Rusty Gage.

Rusty Gage:
Hi everybody. I hope you’re doing well and staying safe, and during this challenging time, I want to thank you all for joining us at this event. I know me as well as you would rather be doing this in the auditorium or the campus, but I think we have to understand that it’s going to be a while before we’ll be able to host any new events again. We’ve entitled this series, The Power of Science. We chose this title, because we know that science has the power to transform our world for the better. Now, more than ever, we’re reminded of the value of your support, our ability to advance critical science research on infectious disease, as well as cancer, aging, and climate change, and other areas is made possible by the support of our private donors. This pandemic is an economic disaster, as well as a public health care crisis. Like every other organization, it is also impacting our funding, but thanks in part to private philanthropy, in particular gifts that go to our unrestricted endowment, we’ve been able to continue our work. So today I want to thank you for joining us and for the support of the Salk Institute, you are the power behind the science, all my best to you and your family. I look forward to seeing you again.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you, Rusty. And as we move into our program, we want to just take a moment to talk about the questions. We have received several questions from many of you already, but we do encourage you to submit questions during the program and at the bottom bar, where the Q&A is highlighted. That’s where you can submit your questions and then we’ll try and group those together. Okay. Now, onto the program. Dr. Satchin Panda is a leading expert in the field of Circadian Rhythm Research. He is a professor at Salk of the Regulatory Biology Lab, and is a founding executive member of the Center for Circadian Biology at UC San Diego. He’s also an author of The Circadian Code, which is a book on Amazon. We know that the body needs to rest and repair, and so it works on a set clock called the circadian rhythm. This research has received a lot more notice lately, with the 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine, went to three scientists who discovered the circadian rhythm. So today Dr. Panda will share his latest discoveries related to circadian clocks and what these findings mean for human health through the lens of COVID-19. Thank you, Dr. Panda.

Satchin Panda:
Thank you. Glad to be here and thank you for attending. So for thousands of years many infectious diseases killed humans until we had the Germ Theory of Disease. With that power, we figured out that, viruses, bacteria, and fungi, for example caused disease, that led to the idea of sanitation and social distancing to stay away from the bugs. And then later on vaccines and antibiotics made it safe, so that we could defeat those diseases. But with the COVID-19, the challenging thing is, we do not have a vaccine yet, and antibiotics and standard therapies may not work that effectively. So we’re essentially left with sanitation and social distancing to avoid the virus, but is there something that we can do to improve our resilience, so that if we get infected, then we can actually stay healthy and come out of the disease much quicker and with less damage.

So in that context, I’d like to propose that maybe, nurturing a healthy circadian rhythm will be in everybody’s hand to improve that resilience. So when it comes to circadian rhythm, we all know that going to bed and waking up is just one sign of having these daily rhythms. But in fact, research in my lab, and in many other labs of the last 20 years, has shown that there are more than just sleep wake cycle, almost every bodily function has a circadian 24 hours rhythm. And in addition what we’re finding is almost every digestive enzyme, every neurochemical, every hormone, and even every single gene in our body rises and falls with a 24 hours rhythm. So the rhythms are much more pervasive than what we thought with sleep wake cycle. So then the question is how are the circadian rhythms organized and clocks are organized?

So it’s just like you can imagine there is a clock in our brain that tells us when to sleep and when to wake up. Research in the last 20 years has also shown, that almost every organ in our body has its own clock. And the brain just gives some signal to synchronize all these clocks, just like a master conductor in an orchestra. And when these clocks work together, then we have daily rhythms in our physiology, metabolism, behavior, and even in our immune system. So now the question is, is there science that our immune system also has a rhythm? So, in fact, research again from Salk and many institutes have shown, that many of our cytokines, or the small molecules that inform our body whether there is a virus or bacteria invading, those cytokines rise and fall toward the day and night.

So that means by having the circadian clock, helps the immune system to prevent the cytokines to go out of control and do a cytokine storm that happens in many diseases and that actually becomes harmful. And another interesting point to notice, in the early to late afternoon, our immune system is more primed to fight bacterial and viral infections. So that means that’s the time, if we accidentally come into contact with any virus or bacteria, then we are more likely to mount a much more protective response to the disease. So in this context, actually when our circadian rhythms get disrupted, then it has two major effects.

One is, it disrupts our organs, so the organs cannot function in their peak performance, so that leads to many of the diseases. And some of the diseases that you see here that are in red actually are other factors, if a patient has some of the disease and on top of that, if they get COVID-19, then the chance of that COVID-19 becoming more serious increases.

So, one way maybe we can avoid severe case of COVID-19 is to reduce the risk for this metabolic disease, such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, and gut diseases. So in this context, if we have a functional and healthy immune system, then the immune system doesn’t have to take care of our organs and rather can focus entirely on fighting the virus. But if we have our circadian rhythms disrupted, then it poses a double-edged sword, because one thing is, the immune system is compromised, so the virus can get entry and can replicate much faster. And second is, when the organs have disease, we now know that many of the metabolic diseases such as fatty liver disease or diabetes, et cetera, there actually is immune system disease. So that means the immune system is busy repairing and care for these affected organs.

So as a result having a disrupted circadian rhythm lowers the bar for the virus to get entry and also to replicate much faster leading to a more severe disease. So now we can summarize all of this to say, “How having a healthy circadian rhythm can help the prevention, treatment, and recovery from COVID-19.” So healthy circadian rhythm runs our organs at peak performance, so that they can function perfectly fine, a risk for many co-morbid diseases as diabetes, obesity, heart disease can go down. And our immune system is ready to fight the virus much more effectively. And at least in animal studies, we have seen that if you disrupt our circadian rhythm by disrupting sleep, then even one 10th of virus spiders, which should not make the animals sick, that is enough to kill the animal. So at least we know that having a good night’s sleep or having a good circadian rhythm can build that immunity.

And once somebody gets tested and is positive, but is not symptomatic, maybe having a strong circadian rhythm will prevent that person to get into more severe disease and can recover much faster. And finally, those of us who are unfortunate to have a severe form of disease, it takes weeks or even months to completely recover from COVID-19. Some of the bad effects of COVID-19 can linger for weeks or months on heart and liver. So having a good circadian rhythm, can again accelerate that recovery. So then the question becomes, how can we take care of our circadian rhythm on a daily basis? Are there some tricks? And again, all this insight into how to nurture our circadian rhythm comes from very basic foundational research, a lot of which was actually done at the Salk Institute.

So over the last 18 to 19 years, we now know that bright light, particularly blue spectrum of light coming through our retina, entrains or synchronizes our brain clock to the outside day and night cycle. And this brain clock acts as a master conductor, so as a brain is more synchronized and has a better circadian rhythm, our organs also have better circadian rhythm. So then the question becomes, how much light is healthy? Over the last few years, many researchers have come to a consensus that having 10,000 lux light for 15 to 60 minutes is enough to not only synchronize our circadian rhythm, it can also reduce depression, Seasonal Affective Disorders, and many affective disorders. And the question is, what is 10,000 lux of light? If you are walking outside on a cloudy day, that’s bright enough, that’s almost five to 10,000 lux of light.

So even if it is cloudy, it’s better to go out and get some bright light. But for an average person who is not depressed, one may get only 1,000 lux of light for 30 minutes, which is equivalent to somebody having breakfast or lunch, right next to the window for 15 to 30 minutes, so that’s enough to synchronize our clock, but at the night time, it’s also important to dim down your light, so having less than 20 lux of light for around two hours before bed time, actually helps our sleep hormone melatonin to build up so that we can go to a good night of sleep. And 20 lux is roughly having a 40 watt bulb in your room. And if you’re curious about measuring light, then you can use the app, My Lux Recorder, which is developed at the Salk Institute, is freely available on the App Store.

The second discovery that my lab made almost eight to 10 years ago was, when the food is presented at the wrong time, for example, at night, late night, when we’re watching TV and watching movie during this COVID-19 time and having some snack, then food at the wrong time can take over the brain and can actually disrupt circadian rhythm in many of these organs, because at night time, our organs also need to sleep and food can wake them up. And as a result, it can disrupt circadian rhythm and lead to many of the diseases. So then the question is, when should we eat? So before we answered this question, we wanted to see when do we actually eat? So again, getting some support from philanthropic donors like you almost seven years ago, we started this project where we wanted to know when people actually eat.

So we developed an app that’s freely available from mycircadianclock.org. That’s in the bottom right corner of this slide, where anyone can go sign up and then download this app and record when they eat. And what you’re seeing here is three weeks of food log, a food diary of one person, and every line here is one tick mark is one calorie containing food. And if we combine these three weeks of data into weekday and weekend, or even if we combine them into just one circle, where the top is 6:00 AM, bottom is 6:00 PM and extreme right is midnoon, and then the extreme left is midnight. You can see that this person was almost eating for 15, 16 or 17 hours, but he’s not an outlier, because when we tested this on 150 people, we found these people, although they do normal, eight to five job, they actually eat a little bit during the nighttime. Over the last four to five months, we have been tracking when people actually eat, and when do regular people eat and when do other people eat.

And I’ll share some data, so on the left side, you will see, I showed the regular people who do eight to five jobs, they eat slightly, between midnight and morning. People who do long work hours or people who have flexible schedule. For example, all the food delivery people, people who are now delivering packages, they have flexible schedule and sometimes they are working late into the night and they’re actually eating more late at night. And we also see that among people who are doing evening shift, this may be the law enforcement people, or people who are at the frontline of COVID-19 fight. And finally, the night shift nurses, doctors, and physicians who are doing night shift and are nibbling little bit to give themselves energy at night and during daytime, they’re also taking care of their family. So they seem like they don’t have a circadian rhythm in eating and fasting. And we know that these night shift workers, these frontline medical workers, are at very high risk for COVID-19.

So this may be one way we can nudge them or train them on how to take care of their circadian rhythm. And in fact, we just finished a study that was published in December, where we took 19% to already hard cardio-metabolic disease, the same diseases that increase our chance of getting severe COVID-19. And when they learn to eat everything that they have to eat and drink within 10 hours, leaving 14 hours of fasting time, then they could significantly reduce their body rate, they improve their diabetes, they reduce their blood sugar, blood pressure, and the cholesterol level. So overall, their health improved. So this study, again, demonstrates whether you are healthy or you have one of these conditions, or even those are already taking medications.

They can adopt this time restricted eating in consultation with their doctors to see some of the improvements. So now the question is, what can we do right now to improve our circadian rhythm? What are a few of the tips that we can follow? We know, at least the sleep scientists have agreed that everybody should sleep for at least eight hours, or be in bed for eight hours and don’t pay attention to this exact timing. It’s not that everybody should go to bed at 10 o’clock, whenever you go to bed, count at least eight hours to be in bed so that you can get seven hours of sleep. And then after we wake up, our organs actually take a little more time to completely wake up and be in that peak performance. So wait for an hour before you have your first calorie, after the first calorie of the day, you can eat everything within eight hours, 10 hours, 11, a maximum 12 hours, and try not to go over that 12 hours.

But at the same time, remember that you have to stop eating and dim down your light two three hours before bed time. And then finally, don’t forget to get out and get some bright light, because even bright light of 30 minutes is a strong antidepressant. It’s plentiful, it’s free, you just have to step outside. Many of you ask, “What about coffee? Coffee does reset our circadian rhythm, there are studies that came out three to four years ago, but at the same time, coffee also keeps us awake. And in fact, a cup of coffee can have its impact on sleep for up 10 to 12 hours. So the rule of thumb is, try to stop coffee after two o’clock in the afternoon, so that we can go to bed much refreshed and much sleepy. And immediately after waking up, if you really have to have a cup of coffee, then maybe it’s better to not have sugar or milk or cream and that way it doesn’t activate your pancreas to start to break your fast.

So finally, in summary, even during this COVID-19 social isolation and staying at home, you can take care of your circadian rhythm. You can improve your health and be healthy. In addition to these preventive measures, my lab and many of the labs at Salk Institute are actually gearing up to learn more about COVID-19, and many labs have started planning to work on COVID-19 virus. And also some of them on COVID-19 patients to understand why some people get most of your disease, why some are resistant. So by asking these very fundamental foundational questions, maybe we’ll learn something that can not only apply to COVID-19, but many of the viral diseases for which we do not have a cure yet. So I’ll stop there and I wish you all the best to you and your family, and please stay safe. Thank you.

Sandy Liarakos:
Thank you Dr. Panda, for a great presentation. Before we move into the questions, I wanted to assure our participants that we will be sending out the recording, as well the references that Dr. Panda shared and the app and so forth. So we will be sending that out. So we’re going to move into the questions. And the first question, Dr. Panda is, during this time when we have a lot of our community health care workers working around the clock, I know you shared a little bit about the lack of schedule, but can you also share the connection between sleep and fatigue and the risk for depression? I think that’s a big concern of all of ours, for our healthcare workers, and the risk for depression when our cycle is… When this rhythm is out of sync.

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So many of our healthcare workers are working at night, so that means the daytime is the only time when they can rest. And that’s also the time when they have to care for their loved ones, their family members. So one challenge for healthcare workers and night shift workers is getting uninterrupted six to seven hours of sleep at their home, because it’s really hard to have a quiet, dark, and cooler room during daytime. So, by helping people to have night out or completely good blinds and then creating a good environment for them to sleep is a big thing. And we also should not forget that many of these healthcare workers are working indoors most of the night, and also staying indoors most of the day. So they actually don’t get a chance to step outside to get some light. So it’s possible that in the late afternoon, if the family is supportive and they pick up some of the whole household work, then the night shift workers can actually step outside, maybe in the late afternoon go for a walk or jog, and that improves mood—that reduces depression, that reduces the burnout and anxiety that they have.

So two things they can do, one is sleep enough even in the daytime, have a consistent schedule during daytime, and try to get some bright daylight before they go to the night shift.

Sandy Liarakos:
Thank you. And one of the question is, some of us have teenagers at home and during the sequestering during this time we may notice that the teenagers are staying up later and sleeping in, maybe sleeping til two, 10, midnight or two, and then waking up late in the morning, how is the circadian rhythms regulated or not regulated in teenagers?

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So this is a very interesting area of research in circadian rhythm, how our rhythms change between when we were kids, to teenagers, to adulthood. And what we know is also eye-opening for all of us.

One is, teenagers’ clock is slightly delayed. So that means their program to actually go to bed is slightly later than adults do, and having too much of evening light again, pushes their bedtime to late bedtime.

Second is, teenagers need more sleep than an adult needs. I shared with you the national sleep foundation recommendation that adults need eight hours of bedtime, and actually teenagers need somewhere between nine to 10 hours of bedtime. And during the normal school hours, they’re not getting that nine hours of sleep. So they are chronically sleep deprived for last six months or seven months before the COVID-19 hit. So what you are seeing is the reflection of two biological phenomena at they’re programmed to go to bed slightly later.

And second, they have so much of accumulated sleep deprivation, that they are just catching up with their sleep. So going forward, this may be a good time to let them practice some healthy sleep habit. You can dim down your light and it can have a schedule so that teenagers can wind down, cool down, and maybe they can have even an evening shower. So that helps them to go to bed around say 10 or not before or not after 11. So that way, they will get used to getting that required seven to eight hours of sleep, or if they’re lucky nine hours of sleep. So even after we come out of COVID-19, and when they go to school, they will be in this habit to have healthy dose of sleep that improves their performance, that improves their intelligence, and their achievement at school.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. So really this time of distancing is really an opportunity for all of us to reset our circadian rhythm. And this is a great question, does your research show that, circadian rhythms are different for women than for men?

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. Circadian rhythms are slightly different between women and men in many different ways. One is between puberty and menopause, women’s circadian rhythm is slightly earlier than men. So that means they are likely to wake up slightly earlier. But in the long run, what is actually interesting is at least in animal models, what we’re seeing is female mice and rats, when they’re young, they’re more resistant to gaining weight even on a high-fat or a high calorie diet, which is surprising. But again, when these animals become older, even if we try to improve their circadian rhythm, then the males are more likely to lose weight, not the female animals.

So this dichotomy between male and female animals between young and old is, are giving us a new experimental paradigm to specifically study how circadian rhythms are different between male and female when they’re young, and how they differ when they become old. Because the biggest challenge in aging now is, we are going to live far more number of years in post-menopausal or equivalent is for males than how many years we are living in our reproductive years. And we have no idea how the clocks work in male and female, and whether it works differently, and how can we tweak it so that we can improve the health of women much more effectively.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Okay. We have a question from Tom, “Has there been any research directed at the potential decrease in the production of melatonin as we age? And if there are things that we can do or eat to avoid such a decrease?”

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So this question about melatonin, melatonin is the sleep hormone that goes up at night and this sleep hormone helps us to stay asleep at night. And what Tom actually brought up is a very interesting phenomenon that scientists have observed for over the last 50 years, but is rarely asked in public forums. So I thank you for raising that question. So for those of you who are not familiar, if you have a 10 year old kid, then that 10 year old kid is producing 10 times more melatonin at night than you may be producing. So then the question is, if we can have that much melatonin, then we all can sleep like a baby. So that’s the dream everybody has.

And the question is, why melatonin level goes down? And this is not a question that relates only to melatonin, there are many hormones in our body that goes down as we age. So the long-term, the bigger question now is, how do our hormone producing cells in our body age, do they age differently, because as you brought up, melatonin is one hormone whose levels decline more precipitously with age, whereas cortisol, the stress hormone, doesn’t decline that much. So this is a foundational question about aging. This is the billion-dollar question, I would say trillion-dollar question about why certain hormones go down, why other hormones stay steady. So, at Salk Institute, there are many labs who are working on aging and we’re in fact, almost poised to start an aging initiative to specifically address some of these questions, how different cells age and what we can do. Meanwhile, what is known is melatonin is one of the hormones that is at least in the US is not controlled by FDA.

So that means even if we supplement with three to five milligrams of melatonin at night, then we may get good night’s sleep. And staying within the safe limit of melatonin can be helpful for our sleep, and also it has shown to have some benefit for reducing breast cancer risk among women. So now the question is, how should we self-administer melatonin? The rule of thumb is, melatonin also makes our pancreas to sleep. So that means we shall not have a melatonin pill that I took when we have our dinner, we should wait for at least one or two hours for our pancreas to do its business of absorbing glucose, and then maybe you can have your melatonin pill, but at the same time, there is no prescribed level that works for everybody. So you may need a little self-experimentation, start with one milligram, two milligrams, or three milligrams, ask your doctor and then try to see what dose is good for you. And I think that’s what we can do when we are gearing up for this aging initiative to understand how our hormones decline.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you. And we will be sure to also include in our follow-up more information about our new aging initiative that we’re really excited about. So we have a couple other questions. Howard asked, “Does everybody’s cycle start at the same time or do different people have cycles start times like hunter-gatherers versus farmers, versus those of us whose ancestors tended the evening fires.” So basically, yeah. The start of everybody’s cycle.

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So this is an exciting question for all of us, because we all think that we are special, each one has its own cycle. In fact, even in the lab, we all think that way, different postdocs and students that think that they have their own rhythm. What is interesting is few years ago, one of my colleagues at Denver, who had the students who thought that many of them are night owls and some of them are early birds. He took all of them camping. So when you go on camping trips, when you have very limited access to your digital devices, then you are essentially becoming a modern-day hunter-gatherer. So then the question is, if you go to this camping trip, when does your clock start? And what is exciting about this study was—it’s actually published—is everybody in that group, irrespective of when they were going to bed in Denver, they all become synchronized and they all felt sleepy and went to bed around nine or 10 at night.

You might say that these people are so tired during daytime hiking, that they went to bed early, but interestingly the same group went on hiking trip the next year, and there was some snow storms, so they could not hike too much. And there were just stuck in their camp. And again, they went to bed around the same time, and to make more deeper investigation, they measured their melatonin level and they were also synchronized with their melatonin levels. So now it comes back to the fundamental question, what happens in modern life? When we have excessive light in the evening, some people are more sensitive. Some people are less sensitive to light, so that differentiates, some people become early birds they can still go to bed, just like hunter-gatherer, and some who are more sensitive to light, they stay awake like teenagers and they go to bed past midnight. So I think COVID-19 this time is a good time to self-experiment. Impound your light in the evening, become a hunter-gatherer, stay away from digital devices, and then see whether you can go to bed around nine or 10 in the evening.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great, thank you. It is an opportunity to do that. We now have a question from Barbara, “How does what we eat and when we exercise affect our circadian rhythms?” So, this is kind of to your point in terms of waking up and waiting an hour before we eat, but what we eat and when we exercise, whether exercising in the morning is better or in the afternoon.

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So let’s start with the food. Our digestive system and our pancreas are prime to digest a bigger meal and even more carbohydrate early in the day, because pancreas produces more insulin much readily in the first half. So that means, it’s better to have a bigger breakfast in the morning. We can digest that much better, and maybe it’s better to have a little bit more protein and fat in the evening that will help us to go through a long period of fasting 14 hours overnight. Then it comes to exercise, any exercise any time of the day is good for us. But then the question is, how do we optimize exercise for those of us who have limited access, limited time to exercise. So studies have shown that those who exercise late in the afternoon can control their blood glucose much better than those who exercise in the morning. And it makes sense, because when we exercise, our muscle can absorb glucose without the help of insulin. And since late in the afternoon, a body produces less insulin then exercise can compensate and we can control our glucose.

Second. We also know that our joints work much better late in the afternoon, so we have less risk for injury from exercise. So in that way, exercising in late afternoon also helps us to reduce our risk for injury from exercise. So these are some of the simple tips we can keep in mind when it comes to food and exercise.

Sandy Liarakos:
So if our biggest meal is earlier in the day when we have a celebration like a birthday, maybe a brunch or a lunch is better than going out for a dinner.

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. Then we can also go to bed early.

Sandy Liarakos:
Okay. We, here’s the question from Carolyn, “Does our immune system deteriorate as we age and if so, will a COVID-19 vaccine ever be effective in oldsters?”

Satchin Panda:
Our immune system does age, and this is also another aspect of aging, but at the same time, what we’re seeing is, for example in Italy, we found there are many cases of centenarians who got COVID-19 and could survive effectively. So that means, maybe there are some people whose immune systems stays healthy late into their old age. And this can be an opportunity to understand, why some people can mount that robust immune response, whereas some other people cannot. Having said that, I would also like to emphasize that many of the disease, for example, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, all of these diseases go up with age. So it’s likely that our immune system is partly busy taking care of the disease, and hence doesn’t have enough bandwidth to fight infectious diseases. Sustain healthy at the old age will also help to use our limited immune system to fight infectious disease.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you. To the above question, “Could a COVID-19 vaccine that is, and will respect our circadian rhythm improve that measurably?”.

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So when it comes to vaccine again there are some interesting aspect of circadian rhythm and vaccine. For example, we know from flu vaccination that people who had a restful night of sleep at least for four or five days, and take the vaccine in the first half of the day, early morning, they respond to the vaccine and boost up the immune system against the flu virus much better than people who go through sleep deprivation or have disrupted sleep or after jet lag they are taking a vaccine and those who are taking it in the afternoon.

So at least in that sense, when the vaccine comes up, we know when and how to take vaccines to boost our immune system. We do not know how vaccines will affect the circadian rhythm, and in fact in the last 60, 70 years, since we started vaccinating in mass scale, we haven’t actually seen any adverse effect or any beneficial effect of vaccination on circadian rhythm. So circadian rhythm—as it is controlled by the brain and many different organs—that may be impervious to vaccination, but having a good circadian rhythm helps us to boost up our immune system in response when we take it.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you. Here’s a question from Rich, “Is there data to suggest that high-performance athletes perform at certain times of the day, for example, Olympic athletes and their performance?” Great question.

Satchin Panda:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And in fact there are many studies done on NFL and NBA players. And so for example, when West Coast team flies to East Coast and plays Monday Night Football, if the team flew on Saturday or Sunday, and the West coast team is actually on that peak performance time that’s late afternoon. So they have a higher chance of winning against the home team only on Monday. And as the day progresses towards the later in the week, then that advantage goes down. So this has been shown in ’80s and ’90s by analyzing 20, 25 years of NFL data and subsequently NBA.

So as a result, now, the idea is many high-performing elite athletes, they are very aware of this timing effect. So for Olympics and many other high stake games, and they do optimize when they travel, how much they sleep and according to against start time, they also figured out how much and when to sleep. So this is an exciting question, and we should also learn from the elite athletes, how we can improve our performance on a daily basis. Whether you’re going to the gym or you’re just trying to do some exercise to improve your health, we may be better off by trying to squeeze out some time late in the afternoon for our exercise.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you. Now here’s the question, back to our healthcare workers, but now specific to patients who are in the hospital, “how does lighting in the hospitals affect patients? I know you’ve done a study on light. Can you share some research on that?”

Satchin Panda:
Yeah. So many of you who have been to hospital or ICU, it must have seen how bright those lights are. And in fact after the LED light bulbs have come, which are super bright, you can easily get 1000 to 1500 lux of light in hospital. And in fact, if you go to a drug store, a Walgreens or CVS or even a grocery store, that’s the amount of light that you get. And that’s high-level of light to reduce our melatonin level, but having the insight from our research on blue light, affecting the clock. Now, we can use this to tune the spectrum on the color of the light. So in fact, there are now, new circadian lighting that’s becoming more and more popular, where the spectrum of light or the color combination of light would slowly change between day and night.

So at night time, it may be a little bit golden brown or yellow or orange that reduces the amount of blue light, and it might help some of the ICU patients to get a good night’s sleep or even nurses and healthcare providers not to get to this subject. And this has been used now, not in hospital… So initially this was actually used in international space station, because of the space station the astronauts are there doing very high-risk jobs. So they have circadian lighting. I hope that in the next five to 10 years, circadian lighting will be widespread so that we can recreate the beneficial effect of safe light at night, so that will help promote sleep and reduce the risk of disease caused by some of the blue light.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you. Here’s an interesting question back to the social distancing and sheltering in place that is going on. “Do you anticipate for those who are by themselves? So totally isolated. They’re at home. They’re practicing the social distancing. How is there a shift in the circadian maybe different? Do you know if there’s any research going on, or what is your take on that?”

Satchin Panda:
Yeah, so the social cues are very strong cues for in training our clock. And in fact the cradle for modern civilization started from this social gathering at night. So the fireside chat among hunter-gatherers and farmers was where people communicated. They shared stories, they relaxed, they resolve the… therapies were also done, people practiced dance and singing—all of this. So, in that way, we are programmed, it’s in our DNA to socialize in the evening by that fireside and having some food. So now, that a lot of us are actually isolated, but then the question is, how can we do that fireside chat with our loved ones in the evening? The good thing is we can make judicious use of our digital devices. We can video chat with our loved ones, and we can even eat, share stories and reduce their anxiety and depression.

And the best example actually is in my family, because my mother lives alone back in India. And there’s a strong, very strict lock down over the last three months. So my mother hasn’t gone out of her house for the last three months. And she’s also older so she doesn’t take that risk. So that means what we do, me and my sister who live here, we take turn to make sure that we call her every evening, her time and talk to her. And that has helped her in many ways. First thing is instead of calling once a week, now we are more close to our mum and second, it doesn’t have that much of anxiety that she could have had if she was living all alone without any company. So this is another example of using a digital device judiciously to do digital social gathering at the right time.

Sandy Liarakos:
That’s nice. Thank you for sharing that. Well, I think we’ve answered all the questions as we wrap up, if you could just summarize kind of the three tips that we all could practice in this time of social distancing, your three tips for us, as a departing gift to us, that would be great.

Satchin Panda:
I think the day starts on the night before, so try to go to bed at a time so that you can be in bed for eight hours. Then second is, whenever you start eating during the daytime, try to eat all your food and beverages that have calories within 10 to 12 hours. And then the third tip is, don’t forget to go outside, to get some daylight, even on a cloudy day. You can be outside for 15 to 30 minutes, that’s enough to improve our world and keep us happy. Thank you.

Sandy Liarakos:
Great. Thank you, Dr. Panda for today’s program and to everyone who participated today, we want to extend the learning and the connection that we have with you, and providing these additional events. And we are going to send the link to today’s recording out to you all as well as the different resources that we talked about, the circadian app, and also information about our aging initiative. So thank you to each of you for participating today. We have a deep appreciation for your connection and your partnership with the Salk Institute, and we hope you have a wonderful day and take care and stay safe.