Chocolate .. useful during the day .. harmful at night

In the study, published years ago, researchers found that the ability of lab mice to regulate blood sugar varied during the day. Changing their biological clock, which indicates when they sleep and wake up, causes them to gain more weight.

Thus, the results of this study explain why night shift workers are more likely to develop diabetes and obesity.

The study also indicated that “disruption of the biological clock in humans leads to disruption of the metabolic process, which results in weight gain even with eating the same amounts of calories in our diet, so the problem is not only what you eat but when you eat it.”

In this study, the researcher tested the efficiency of mice's bodies in digesting food during the twenty-four hours. It has been shown that during daylight hours when mice cannot eat normally, they are less responsive to insulin, the hormone that tells body tissues to take sugar from the blood to be used as energy, and excess sugar that is not used for energy is converted into fat.

When the researchers disrupted the circadian clocks of mice by placing them under a dim red light throughout the day, the mice developed signs of insulin resistance, which means their body tissues did not respond to insulin signals to take in sugar, causing them to gain weight.

Insulin resistance is also linked to diabetes and heart disease in humans.