In this first half with world-renowned chronobiologist Dr. Satchin Panda, we translate the science of timing into practical steps you can start today. Below you’ll find clear, clinician-informed protocols for light, sleep, and daily timing—plus when to use each, how long to do them, and why they improve metabolic health, mood, focus, and recovery.
Start Here: The 30–60 Minute Morning Light Anchor
Best for: daytime alertness, stable mood, better sleep the same night
How to:
- Within 30–60 minutes of waking, get outdoor daylight for 10–30 minutes (cloudy or shade is fine; no sunglasses if comfortable).
- If you must stay indoors, move near the brightest window; turn on overhead lights.
Pair with gentle movement: a walk, light stretch, pet care, balcony time.
Why it works: Specialized retinal cells (melanopsin-containing) send a strong “daytime” signal to your brain’s master clock, boosting alertness now and starting the timer for melatonin release later. Morning light also supports mood circuits linked to seasonal affective symptoms.
Pro tip: Treat it like brushing your teeth—non-negotiable daily hygiene for your brain and metabolism.
Build the Daily Habit: The Consistent Sleep Window
Best for: hormone balance, immune repair, memory, weight regulation
How to:
- Choose a fixed 8-hour sleep window you can keep 7 days/week (e.g., 10:00 pm–6:00 am).
- Start dimming lights 2 hours before bed; reduce screens or use warm/amber settings.
- Keep the bedroom cool, dark, and quiet; reserve it for sleep and intimacy.
Why it works: Your body runs on 24-hour programs—different systems (digestion, tissue repair, learning) peak at different times. A regular sleep window lets the brain “take out the trash,” rebalance hormones, and run nightly repairs with precision.
Evening Wind-Down: Dim, Warm Light & Digital Sunset
Best for: falling asleep faster, fewer night wakings
How to:
- After dusk, swap bright overheads for lamp-level, warm light.
- Create a “digital sunset” 60–90 minutes before bed (no tablets/TV on the couch; if needed, use the smallest screen, lowest brightness, warmest tint).
- If you must step into a bright store at night, use a cap/visor and keep it brief.
Why it works: Bright, blue-rich light at night suppresses melatonin and shifts the clock later. Dimming and warming light removes the “daytime” signal so sleep pressure can rise naturally.
Meal Timing (Teaser for Part Two): The 8–10 Hour Eating Window
Best for: glucose stability, lipids, weight regulation, GI comfort
How to (overview):
- Aim to eat within the daytime and finish meals 2–3 hours before bed.
- Keep your daily eating window to ~8–10 hours (details and options in Part Two).
Why it works: Your organs have clocks too. Aligning food with daylight supports metabolic enzymes, insulin sensitivity, and gut motility—without calorie counting or diet culture rules.Midday Brightness Bump (Optional but Powerful)
Best for: afternoon slump, mood support
How to:
- Get a second 5–10 minute daylight dose between noon and 3 pm (window light if needed).
- Pair with a quick walk, stair breaks, or stretching.
Why it works: Reinforces your daytime signal, reduces sleepiness, and improves circadian amplitude (stronger day/night separation = better sleep at night).
For more expert insights on psychology, nutrition, and wellness, visit http://anew-insight.com/
Grounding Routine Before Bed
Best for: racing thoughts, “tired but wired,” rumination
How to:
- 5 minutes: lights low, devices away.
- Sit or lie down with support; do slow nasal breathing (e.g., 4-in / 6-out).
- Add a simple body scan (jaw, shoulders, belly, hips) and release tension on each exhale.
Why it works: Gentle interoception and longer exhales cue the parasympathetic system, making it easier for your circadian sleep drive to take over.
Safety Notes
- Photosensitive conditions, bipolar spectrum, retinal disease, or migraine triggered by light: tailor morning light with your clinician.
- Insomnia: keep wake time fixed; move bedtime later temporarily to consolidate sleep before shifting earlier.
- Shift work/jet lag: prioritize immediate local morning light and avoid bright light during your target “night.”
Explore Dr. Satchin Panda’s research and resources →
https://www.salk.edu/scientist/satchidananda-panda/, https://www.instagram.com/satchin.panda/?hl=en, https://www.linkedin.com/in/satchin-panda-926ba369/, https://x.com/satchinpanda?lang=en
Continue Your Journey
- 🌿 Rebuild body trust and nervous-system regulation inside my step-by-step program: Deprogram Diet Culture course
- 📘 Go deeper on mindset, cravings, and sustainable health: Deprogram Diet Culture book (paperback, Kindle, and audio) — find it via the book page on my site
- 🎧 Listen to the full ANEW Insight episode featuring these practices and Dr. Lavretsky’s research
View here the full podcast Transcript:
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone. I can’t even believe my luck, but I am so honored and so fortunate to have world renowned scientist and bestselling author Dr. Satchin Panda with us today. Dr. Panda, thank you so much for joining me today.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Yes. So, uh, just a background. I went to the American Psychiatric Association conference and I saw that Dr. Panda was speaking and I had to go see his talk. Um, I have read, uh, the circadian code, which we’ll talk about. Um, and I just wanted to hear him in person. And then I just was brave and asked him to be on the podcast.
And here you are. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on my podcast.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah, you’re doing great in communicating science to general audience. You know, we, scientists are not very good in telling people what we do, [00:01:00] so thank you for doing this.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Oh, absolutely, and you are very good. I, I saw you on the Huberman podcast and, uh, was joking with you before that you have amazing podcast stamina. Um, this will not be as much of a marathon, but I hope to get as many questions in as possible. Before we do that, I’m gonna read a little bit about Dr. Panda.
So hang tight, Dr. Panda. Dr. Satchin Penda is a world renowned scientist whose groundbreaking work in chronobiology has transformed our understanding of how the body’s internal clocks govern health, weight, energy, and aging. As a professor at the SOC Institute for Biological Studies, Dr. Panda has dedicated his career to exploring the science of circadian rhythms and their profound effect on human physiology.
His pioneering discovery of the blue light sensing protein. Melanopsin helped explain how light regulates the [00:02:00] brain’s master clock and has influenced global recommendations on sleep hygiene and screen use. I know I have changed my screen use based off of this research. Dr. Panda is also celebrated for his research on time restricted eating, showing that when we eat.
Maybe is important as why we eat. His work demonstrates that aligning meals, activity, and rest with the body’s natural rhythms can reverse metabolic disease, enhance longevity, and restore vitality without requiring caloric restriction or extreme diets. That’s what I’m all about you guys. So this is so exciting to me. Through his bestselling book
The Circadian Code, and he has just rec recently, uh, written one. The Circadian Code, uh, is it Diabetes, uh, edition.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Diabetes Code. Yes.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: The Diabetes Code. Uh, Dr. Panda has brought the science of biological timing to the public in an accessible and empowering [00:03:00] way with warmth, brilliance, and unwavering dedication. He continues to shape a new era of health, rooted in the rhythms of nature.
Dr. Panda welcome.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Thank you.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: I really love to explore people’s inspiration on this podcast and what drew them to this research. So what drew you to the study of biological clocks and how did this early research lead to the insights that, uh, informed the Circadian Code books?
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah, that’s a very loaded question that goes back to 30 years or so. But, um, you know, when I was finishing college and starting to think about what to do in life. I was drawn into biomedical research, but at the same time I realized that biomedical research, typically we compare the body to a machine or a car and just like you can start the car or start a machine. At any time [00:04:00] of the day or night, it’ll still run the same. body is not like that. Um, if you ask me to give, do this podcast at uh, one o’clock and night, then there is no way I’ll be awake and talking to you. So that struck me that our body is not the same between morning and evening or when we go to bed. We go to bed in one state, very tired, and our brain is very confused and foggy, and we wake up very differently if you had good night of sleep.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Mm-hmm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: So I was drawn into this question, um, what happens to our body throughout 24 hours and is there a reason behind it? And it’s, so then how can we leverage that improve health, prevent disease, accelerate cure, or didn’t find new medication that target this timing in biology.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: So give me a picture of how your research began. Like what did you first start to look at, [00:05:00] and then how did you, um, discover these, uh, light sensing protein
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Mm-hmm.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: uh, and tie that into circadian rhythms.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah, so my, uh, undergraduate research was an, uh, undergraduate degree is in actually agriculture or plant biology. And, um, most people may not know that plants also have a strong circadian clock. And those who have seen the video of a sunflower plant can appreciate it. Like, uh, the sunflower leads wake up in the morning, harvest the light, and then the sun sunflower kind of tries to look at the sun and then. At night, the sunflower lips actually drip down as if they’re going to sleep. So, and that process actually helps plants to harvest sunlight and increase the eff efficiency of, um, carbon fixtures on, on making food, making all the food that we eat ultimately [00:06:00] comes from plants and that increases. Having a clock actually helps the plant to of open the shop before the sunlight comes in and then they shut down the shop before sun sets. And my interest was how the plant has a clock. So I was working on a mutant plant that actually had a slightly longer clock. And the bottom line is after I cloned this particular gene in the plant, we realized that this quote unquote clock gene was actually tied to NAD metabolism that means to energy balance in this cell.
So that was a aha moment that, well, actually, the biological timekeeping is really linked to how the plant is sensing energy, making energy or storing energy, all of that. As plants, um, always have to sense light as also prime to the idea of how humans [00:07:00] or mice sense light and reset our clock. And until that time, it was known that our usual rod and cones that we have in our eyes that give us vision so that we can navigate throughout day and night. Those rod and corn cells are not necessary for resetting our clock. So that means there are many blind people who cannot see, when they fly from west coast to east coast or vice versa, then they do get their flag for the first three or four days and then they can reset to the same time zone just like rest of us.
So that is like interesting that, blind people can still reset their clock and, but there are some blind people who unfortunately have lost both their eyes because of surgery or accident. They cannot reset their clock. Uh, so that means the light going through the skin because we always think that our skin can sense light.
We get a tan you know, vitamin Bs produced in [00:08:00] our skin in response to light. None of that process seems to be sufficient to reset our sleep work cycle. So that’s why I was curious in that eye that is not rod and cone that restart our clock so that lead to the research, and this is where I must also emphasize how foundational research actually helps make big breakthrough.
Like for example, we often forget that, um, you know, research is not all about treating patients. Sometimes research to figure out, for example, how a frog senses light, darkens its skin, like how the frog gets a tan. That research actually to the discovery that actually frog skin has a protein called melanopsin. So the skin cells that are darker, those are called melanosomes because
they
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: are pigmented
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: cells, and opsin typically refers to a light [00:09:00] sensing protein.
So that’s how it was called melanopsin. So it does not me, but some other people who were curious about how frog gets a suntan. They figured out that there is a licensing protein called Melanopsin, and this is one example of how foundational research funded by honest taxpayers actually leads to some discovery and then another stream of foundational research that was trying to sequence the genome of humans so that we know what genes are also at the same time genomes of mice, flies and all these organisms that is going on. And then we figured out that this gene that makes a frog get suntan is actually present in very few cells in human eye or mouse retina and these few cells, and not the ones that we use to see the world, but cells were never known to [00:10:00] have a light sensor. So this is an example of how very foundational research in two different completely unrelated fields, genome or DNA sequencing and how frogs changed. The skin color came together and we discovered that this gene is there.
And then we said, okay, so let’s. Figure out what this gene does. So another type of foundational research that started in seventies and eighties to figure out how to change a gene in a mouse or human, now what we call gene therapy. Um, so in 2000, 2001, we kind of did a gene therapy in a reverse way. We said, okay, so let’s take out this gene from. Mouse and then see whether the mouse gets jet lag or not. And then we found that the mouse was getting severe jet lag if they don’t have this blue light sensing protein.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Oh, poor little mouse.
That is an amazing, uh, [00:11:00] interconnection of species and studies. Um, I am so grateful to the sun tanning frog and that little jet lagged mouse.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: to bring us to circadian clocks. So if you could explain to maybe our less science, uh, minded people, exactly what is our circadian clock and why are they essential to ever, everything from digestion, sleep, mood, weight, immunity.
What is it about this clock that is so important?
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: So we, um, not only we humans, almost every living, moving animal, and also almost all plants on this planet have what we call a circadian clock. Circadian literally means 24 hours clock. And the reason is, um, if you now go back to uh, our ancestral leaving, for [00:12:00] example, you know, once I was in Africa and I realized the importance of a circadian clock because, supposedly there is a overcast day, it’s cloudy and all, and then you are hunting or gathering food outside it becomes late afternoon and, and you’re kind of a little bit hungry and you want to come back home. Because you know, being out there among lions in the evening is not the best thing for your survival, you run back to your hut. And, and actually that’s what, uh, literally happened to me because I was trying to get back to my campsite and I got lost. And I realized that, huh? That primal fear came like, is there a lion in that bush is going to attack me?
Because lions actually come back. They know that. This is the time when animals and humans, not humans, animals get lost. And this is the time when they come to drink their last sip of water. So this is the time when to attack. the [00:13:00] idea is my circadian clock can sense that evening is about to happen and I, I have to go back home, eat something, and then go back to sleep is a very survival advantage. Forget about me. Supposedly it was a deer or a little rabbit. All of them do it. So circadian clocks essentially let us anticipate time and then start to do something before that time arrives. For example, in this case, I anticipated when it’s going to be dark and then I ran back. So similarly, what we have discovered is means when I say we, it’s the entire field of circadian rhythm.
Hundreds of scientists over the last 20, 50 years is we have very intrinsic time counting mechanism that’s built into our DNA, literally into our DNA. So that means if you now lock me inside [00:14:00] this room without a watch, without a clock, without internet, without phone, there is enough food here on the bed, then, even without knowing what time it is, my body will fall asleep, will feel sleepy around say nine or 10 o’clock in the evening. I’ll sleep for eight, nine hours and then wake up even without any external cue of day and night cycle. I’ll wake up exactly after eight hours or so. Uh, my body temperature will begin to rise. I’ll have bowel movement, mostly likely in the morning, my cortisol will peak, and then the, I’ll feel like, um, eating something moving around throughout the day. And then in the evening, again, this. I’ll go back to sleep and it’ll continue to happen in this clockwork mechanism like five or 10 minutes precision every single day. And in fact, these experiments were done long time ago, almost 60, 70 years ago. Some volunteers wanted to see whether the [00:15:00] circadian clock, they actually went inside a cave and then everytime they went to bed, they had a home telephone they would call outside saying, I’m going to bed. then the outside person will write down what time it is or, so they did that sometimes in the care of spending 60 days, 70 days, without any contact with outside ward, without any time in queue.
And they figured out that these people are going to bed and waking up in roughly 24 hours every day, actually 24 hours, five minutes, or 24 hours, 10 minutes. That led to the idea that we have. Uh, inbuilt timekeeping mechanism. Then the question is why? The reason is the broad reason is our body cannot do everything at the same time.
So, for example, you cannot eat and swim and read at the same time, or sleep. What we call a body has figured out a way to do incompatible processes at different time of the day. [00:16:00] So that’s why we sleep. We don’t have bowel movement in our sleep or we don’t have,
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Fingers crossed.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: or we don’t feel super hungry. So we can go seven, eight hours without feeling hungry at nighttime. But during daytime, even if you are just sitting in your chair, you’ll feel hungry. Uh, because, uh, because of this, what we call temporal separation of incompatible processes. So that means the clocks help our body to do this differently.
And then second thing is to do things that are similar. So for example, during daytime we have much better muscle tone. We also feel hungry so that we can walk to the vending machine and get the food or, you know.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Hopefully not the vending machine.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah, I mean, in nature we had to go and find food and come back, right?
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Nature’s vending machine. I got it.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yes, we had to work for it, but [00:17:00] actually you have to just press now home delivery. So, uh, you know, so this compatible processes that together incompatible processes are differently. And then the third thing is, throughout the day when we do certain tasks, our body actually goes through a lot of injuries.
So for example, our gut lining, nearly seven to 10% of our gut lining gets injured uh, our skin cells get injured. So there are a lot of injuries that happen during the day and. I if, if you imagine if there is a machine like that getting this much injuries, then you have to send that machine or your car to the body shop to the repair shop to get it repaired. That’s exactly happens to our body. We go to sleep and we are just not lying there. We are actually lying on the, on, literally on the operation theater. Or maybe if it is a car, then the car is lifted up and all the tune up is going on. That’s exactly happened, so. Lining [00:18:00] up our intestine gets repaired, our skin gets repaired, and then our brain, the trash is literally taken out.
And when we wake up, our body has gone through that overnight reset, rejuvenation, and repair.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Hmm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: clock does all of this. Uh, we have an inbuilt program to do all of this. So similarly, when the repair is going on. You don’t want to eat anything because it’s almost like you cannot, repair a road when the traffic is still flowing. So that’s why, uh, the clock also starts down our hunger center at nighttime so that we are less hungry so that the repair can go. So what we have found, what the field has found is almost every single cell, uh, in our body. Uh, in every organ has its own clock. Um, starting from our hair cells to our intestine.
Everything has a clock. So for example, our hair also doesn’t grow continuously. It grows only for [00:19:00] few hours every night then it pause, sorry. Actually during daytime, it, uh, kind of for humans, it, uh, it’s during daytime. So, you know, there are all these processes built in to repair, reset, and body every single day.
And when we don’t pay attention to this intrinsic mechanism to repair, then we fall sick. that’s as simple as that.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Yes. And so, you know, and, and I was listening to you, uh, on the Huberman podcast talking about night owls versus, you know, morning, what do they call ’em? Just morning people, I guess. Um. And how they, there really is not necessarily any such thing as a night owl. Is that true? And, and if that’s true, why then, are there people out there who are saying, well, I’m, you know, I’m just a night owl.
Um, I, I can’t get up early [00:20:00] in the morning, even though, from what I can tell from your research, we, our bodies are designed to wake. With the morning sun and to start to get sleepy, you know, around like you said, nine or 10 after the sun has gone down. How do you explain that?
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah. So, um, you know, for this kind of research, people have gone back to ancestral leaving when there is no light, no caffeine. No hot chocolate and beer and wine, all of that stuff, and you can do this experiment on yourself if you’re a, if you’re a strong believer that you’re an early bird or night out, whatever it is, you go camping for seven days or eight days, and then whatever in your backpack.
And enough water, no caffeine, no tea, no hot chocolate, dark chocolate.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Well, you can fit those into a backpack and I, I did do that growing up in Colorado, but let’s pretend we don’t do that.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah means people can take a lot of chocolate [00:21:00] but that can fit or you know, caffeine powder and then you put it into water. A lot of people do that, but supposedly you do this experiment and in fact somebody in Colorado did this experiment, Ken Wright a professor Ken write who is uh, professor there. He took his entire lab on camping trip. And these kids, you know, they are college kids and they strongly believe that they’re night owl because they cannot go to bed before one o’clock in the morning. So they were very convinced that it’s, it is their genes that are making them to stay awake till one o’clock. And when they went on camping, they realized that without all the stimulants, without the bright light of the city, then they were all falling asleep around nine or 10 at night. Then they said, well, let’s come back again and do this experiment more carefully. So they even measured their nighttime melatonin rhythm [00:22:00] and um, body temperature and all these very sophisticated measurement. what they found was when these kids are in college and they are studying on the bright light and have a lot of caffeine to keep them away, then they go to sleep after one o’clock at night. But when you withdraw all of these and then put them back to ancestral living in campsite, even if they’re not hiking day long, you might argue that, oh, well they were tired, so that’s why they fell asleep. No, it’s not about that. Even their sleep hormone melatonin got reset and it began to rise, say six or seven in the evening so that after three or four hours they could fall asleep. So that was the kind of experiment that tell us that. Um, you know, if you ask people, almost half of the people on this planet will say either they’re early bird or night owl. But if you go back and ask in very ancestral population or [00:23:00] places where there is very little electricity, you don’t see this 50% calling themselves night owl or night owl or earlybird. It may be one in 200 or one in 300. Who might have, so that raises another question. It may not be our clock is running differently, but some people may be more sensitive to light. Some people may be more sensitive to caffeine, so that even if they had just one cup of coffee in the morning, that would keep them awake till one o’clock at night. Whereas some other people may be much more resistant to caffeine or light. And irrespective of what happens, they will fall asleep at night, not 10 o’clock. So I think the, um, the take home message is it’s may not be, our clock is running differently. It’s our habit. and these habits, we don’t know whether we are more sensitive to caffeine.
We are less sensitive to caffeine. Or even recently, there is a new study that came out [00:24:00] studying thousands of people over several weeks. That those who exercise in the late afternoon or early evening, they’re likely to fall asleep later because likely, most likely that they have stress hormone that goes up. And when you exercise, your core body temperature also is going up. So that might, delay people falling sleepy. So these are, we have to think about all these habits. So the good thing is if we think about the habits. Then we can fix that. If you’re, then you can fix that. But if you think it’s in your gene, then unfortunately we cannot fix that.
We cannot make it. We cannot edit your gene that easily. Having said that, there are very few people who actually have genetic defect who can have genetic defect and. Usually it’s not only that they, they fall asleep very easily in the evening, or they cannot sleep before one o’clock. They also have other health conditions.
Some of them [00:25:00] might have severe migraine pain. Some of them may have other conditions, um, with their mental health. So most normal people, when they call themself night owl or earlybird, most likely it’s their habit.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Wow. Okay, so, oh, I have so many questions and there’s so little time. Give me a picture of what would be a perfect circadian rhythm for somebody. Uh, that means what, what optimizes say their, uh, physical health, their weight, um, mental health, um, you know, just everything that they, you know, should do in a day when they should go to bed, done, like completely optimize their health.
And then what happens when we’re outside of all of those recommendations? Just give us some general, uh, health consequences. When we don’t follow that.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah. So, uh, maybe I’ll break it down [00:26:00] to, uh, what elements in our habit affects what part of the clock. So, for example, we started this discussion with this, um, melanopsin or the blue light sensing protein. So this blue light sensing protein that’s in our eye that, uh, senses blue light, but it also needs much brighter light. So that means during daytime, when we are outdoor, the daylight is the richest source of blue light because sunlight is strongly, has very strong blue light component, and even if you’re not exposed to sunlight, even under a canopy, under a tree, even inside your car, even if it’s a cloudy day, there is enough blue light. And during daytime, having exposure to that blue light does, um, various things. One is it resets our clock so that we are actually on the same circadian clock. So for example, those who do night shift, day shift, or they have traveled from east coast to west coast or one or two time [00:27:00] zones, having exposure to that bright daylight actually helps to reset our clock. Second thing is the same light sensors actually connect to part of the brand that control our alertness or depression. So that means people who live in winter in Canada or northern countries, they know that in winter when they get less light, they get depressed. You don’t have to live in Canada, actually.
You can live in sunny California or Texas and or Florida, but are not, if you’re not going outdoor, you’re essentially mimicking as if you’re living in. Stockholm or Canada or Toronto in winter.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Mm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: So that means daylight, even for an hour, even if you’re not in sun, just under a, on a veranda or under a tree, uh, that one hour of bright light is enough to uplift your mood and reduce the depression symptom.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Mm-hmm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: that’s about light. [00:28:00] now we can connect that, why this is important, and conversely, in the evening. If you have bright light, for example, if you walk into a, into a grocery store or a drug store, these days you have almost a thousand lux of light. So that means that light is a thousand times brighter than a candle. So that’s the rough estimate. And at that light level, it’ll put a break on your melatonin so you cannot fall asleep easily.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Hmm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: means in the evening, we should avoid that light, and we should minimize our exposure to blue light. So that means you can have, you know, orange color kind of that light in your bedroom. so now we can connect what light is good for you during day, what light is good for you at evening or night. Then we can come to, um, food. So, although brain clock is very sensitive to light, [00:29:00] we have clock in rest of our body, our digestive system, our heart kidney.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Wait on the food. Let’s do all, we’re gonna spend the rest of the podcast, the second half, all on food. So just give a little snippet, a little teaser for everybody, what recommendations you have on food, and then we’re gonna really dive into that in our second half.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yeah, so the food is, just like you should get light during the daytime. Similarly, you should get food only for set number of hours. So that means if you give yourself somewhere between eight to 10 hours, your body is enjoying food, then you will improve your health by letting the body to rest, regenerate, repair itself during the rest, 16 to 14 to 16 hours of fasting, that seems to be the biggest impact on circadian rhythm and health.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Yes. [00:30:00] And if you don’t, so many different types of difficulties can happen. If your eating window say is anywhere outside of that kind of time restricted zone, um, that’s when you start to see, especially people eating late at night. Um. Are a lot more prone to metabolic disorders, uh, insulin resistance, things like that.
It’s a combination also of what we’re eating. Um, but the timing of our eating is really important. And we’re gonna dive into that like majorly in the second half of this podcast. Are there any other recommendations outside of light and food that people can take away in this half?
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: And then sleep because when we sleep, our brain reworks itself. It cleanses itself and also produces different types of hormones. For different, uh, part of the night.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Mm-hmm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: right after we [00:31:00] sleep, we have a spike of growth hormone and then our, then our testosterone and cortisol, they all reach their trough level and then they begin to rise. A lot of our hormones are kind of, you can say a rebalanced at nighttime. Mm-hmm. And our brain also takes out its own trust. So that means our brain cleanses itself during our sleep.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Hmm.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: So when you sleep less, it’s almost like you are stopping the washer and dryer and taking out dirty half clean cloth, putting them into half dry condition, and maybe in the morning you’re putting some perfume, that’s your cash into get out of the house.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think that, you know, I, and there’s plenty of research to show that, um, you know, when, when he is talking about the trash being taken out, um, it’s those kind of, uh, tangled proteins and plaques from the brain that can contribute to dementia and Alzheimer are actually washed away [00:32:00] during sleep, so when we don’t sleep enough, we can be much more prone to those kinds of neurological disorders.
Am I correct?
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Yes.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Wow. Uh, there’s 80,000 more questions. I just wanna ask so many questions, but I also really wanna get into time restricted eating and how some of those, um, recommendations may have been skewed, some in diet culture, and what do we do about that? So that’s gonna be in our second half of our podcast.
But Dr. Panda, oh my. Goodness. You are an amazing wealth of information and I’m so honored to have you on my podcast. You’ll be joining me for the second half, of course.
satchin_1_07-30-2025_111119: Thank you.
dr–supatra-tovar_3_07-30-2025_111119: Yes. All right, everyone, so thank you so much for joining us. Tune in next time for the second half of this interview with world renowned scientist and bestselling author Dr.
Satchin Panda.
[00:33:00]
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