VeroScience
Resetting Biological Clock Systems
Over the past half century (an extremely short period of evolutionary time) the incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes has gone from non-existent in most parts of the world to greater than 50% of the population. Intense research into potential genetic defects responsible for such a pandemic support the contention that all the discovered genetic defects that predispose to metabolic syndrome can account for only about 5% of the total incidence. How could such a pandemic grow so quickly across all ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the geographic world? Research from VeroScience's laboratory and from many others point to important roles for the biological clock systems of the body that evolved to regulate metabolism in anticipation of ensuing seasons of food scarcity or abundance. Such clock mechanisms are responsible for the actual SEASONAL induction of the obese insulin resistant state (for survival against low glucose supply for the brain during seasons when none is naturally available in the wild) as well as for its reversal at appropriate seasons of the year when food is scarce and abundant, respectively. The clock mechanism also responds to westernized lifestyle “stress” signals from high fat diet, altered sleep wake cycles, social stress, and altered photoperiods to move the animal into the “survival mode” of the obese insulin resistant state. Unfortunately such a persistent stress “locks” the individual into the obese insulin resistant seasonal condition all year long that eventually leads to metabolic pathology of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Resetting this clock system (from the insulin resistant to insulin sensitive seasonal organization) is a method for improving such pathology.