Nightshift workers should avoid iron-rich foods

Research shows intake of certain foods late at night risks diabetes


Ians October 24, 2014

NEW YORK: People who work in the ‘graveyard’ shift may have a will of iron, but they should avoid iron-rich foods during late hours of the night. A new research has found that consuming iron-rich foods, such as steak, brown rice or green vegetables, may increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes in workers who punch in for the night shift.

Researchers found that dietary iron plays an important role in the day-to-day clock of the liver. “Iron is like the dial that sets the timing of the body clock,” said study lead author Judith Simcox from the University of Utah in the United States. Discovering a factor such as iron that sets the circadian rhythm of the liver may have broad implications for people who do shift work, Simcox added.

The liver’s circadian clock is set by food intake. As people sleep, this clock helps maintain a constant blood glucose level and then causes it to spike just before they wake up. The researchers wanted to identify external factors that set the circadian clock in the liver.

They fed iron to mice as part of their natural eating cycle and observed that dietary iron increases the cellular concentration of heme, an oxygen-carrying iron compound found in haemoglobin. They found that when heme binds to circadian proteins, their activity increases and causes the liver to optimally control blood glucose levels.

Increased activity of a circadian protein is healthy when it occurs in the liver’s natural clock cycle. However, if this happens at a time that is out of sync with the circadian clock, such as during a graveyard shift, it could result in abnormal blood glucose levels.

“When a shift worker eats foods high in iron at night it could exacerbate the lack of synchronisation between the clock in the liver and the main one in the brain,” concluded study author Donald McClain. The study appeared online in the journal Diabetes. IANS

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25th, 2014.

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