For Better Health, Think Paleo Lighting

We’ve all heard about the Paleo diet. Essentially, it is based on eating only the types of foods assumed to have been eaten by early humans during the Paleolithic or Stone Age period (which lasted about 2.5 million years).  This diet comprises mainly meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit.  It has been asserted that this high protein/low carb diet is in harmony with the metabolic adaptations that evolved in humans.  Although there are several caveats to this type of diet (for example, hunting and eating wild meat is vastly different from barbecuing modern domesticated meat purchased at Costco), overall, the benefits of the Paleo diet seem to outweigh the risks for most people. In addition to our mostly processed-food diet, one feature of modern life that may have even more negative consequences for our evolved biology is light at night. Outside of the very highest latitudes, life on Earth evolved over the course of the past 3 to 4 billion years under the defining pattern of light only during the day and dark during the night. The temporal rhythm of our rotating planet was internalized in our bodies. Virtually, all organisms on the planet have self-sustaining, internal biological clocks. These clocks likely evolved to anticipate light and dark so that plants could efficiently orchestrate photosynthesis or counteract damaging redox reactions on a daily basis. As organisms became more complex, these internal clocks regulated not just metabolism, but other functi...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news