Rhonda: Okay. One other thing that I was kind of thinking about in the parallels between how this meal timing is having a pretty profound effect on, you know, for example your...what's considered your long-term blood glucose levels and also to some degree on inflammation, and these are markers of...these markers are known to be associated with increased breast cancer risk. But you said that weight loss may not necessarily occur, but what's interesting, so you may not...let's say you don't change the types of foods you eat but just you're basically only eating, you know, during a 12 hour window during the day. So that in itself may not cause you to lose weight, or it could.

Ruth: Or a significant amount.

Rhonda: Or a significant amount. But what's interesting is that, on the flip side, weight loss, weight loss itself has also been shown to have a positive effect on these same biomarkers.

Ruth: Yes. Right.

Rhonda: And so...

Ruth: So we actually think that some of the positive effect might be independent of weight loss. You get the positive effect whether or not you lose weight. In our pilot study, women over a month lost about a kilogram, or about a little over two pounds. So we did see a modest weight loss, that's very modest. But even the mice study that...studies that Dr. Panda does also tend to suggest that the impacts may be independent, like, it just helps you regardless of whether you lose weight or not.

Rhonda: Yeah. That's kind of what I was getting at.

Ruth: Right.

Rhonda: It seems as though it may just really be affecting your metabolism and making sure that your timing your food intake with when you are...when your metabolism's at its best, when you can process...

Ruth: Right.

Rhonda: ...these, you know, the sugar and the fats and...

Ruth: Right.

Rhonda: ...just everything that you're throwing at it. And that seems to be in of itself extremely important, so.

Ruth: Right. And, you know, we have seen, in our breast cancer survivor study, we definitely saw an improvement in hours of sleep per night when people had a longer fasting duration. And, you know, sleep...bad sleep can also affect biomarkers, and it’s its own risk. So that might be partially...you know, it's partially working through direct metabolic effect but it might be working through other behaviors too by improving sleep and getting more sleep could also help regulate your metabolism and kind of feed into the positive impacts. Similarly, it's very interesting but in several mice of studies, they've shown big improvements in spontaneous activity when they're put on this...when they're not on this fasting regimen. We don't necessarily think that if women or humans adopt a prolonged nightly fast they're going to start working out at the gym, but there might be some more subtle effects on spontaneous activity which frankly is the majority of the physical activity most people have, is just spontaneous everyday normal activity. So now, the animal studies lead us to believe it can have several behavioral impacts in addition to the direct metabolic impacts.

Rhonda: Yeah, that's very interesting. I wonder if there's just changing the brain, you know, lots of...

Ruth: You know, the data is showing that eating a bunch of food and going to sleep disrupts your sleep, has been around a long time.

Rhonda: Yeah.

Ruth: You know, it's just you don't sleep well on a full stomach, [inaudible 00:33:01]. You know, so it's kind of...that's literature's been out there while.

Rhonda: I've been practicing this time restricted feeding...

Ruth: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rhonda: ...now for...once I, you know, Dr. Satchin Panda's work was really eye-opening and I, you know, thought well I'm gonna... I usually try to stop, you know, stop eating earlier, like earlier in the day. And it's a lot easier for me in the winter, fall and winter months when it gets darker earlier and I'm not working so late. The thing for me is when I'm working late, you know, once you start working later, it's light out, I'm like, "Oh, I got to keep working, I got to keep working," then you start to like extend your workday.

Ruth: Right.

Rhonda: And that becomes the issue.

Ruth: Surprise, Western lifestyle is carcinogenic. In case you didn't know that, now you do.

Rhonda: So now we have the bright light exposure in the evening.

Ruth: Many things about our lifestyle are carcinogenic.

Rhonda: Right. But I do. It's really not that difficult to do and I'm...just now I'm...I start the clock once I have my first cup of coffee and it's at, okay, well I got to start cooking dinner, you know, at least two hours before that or something so that way I'm done. And you don't...you're not hungry, you know, you're not like starving when you go to bed.

Ruth: Right.

Rhonda: Some people I think their fear is, well, you mentioned it's hard to sleep when you're super full, but on the flip side a lot of people have this mentality that if they're really hungry, you can't sleep.

Ruth: Right.

Rhonda: You know? But I think there's a nice balance between those two, and that is if you just eat something, you know, in a reasonable time, you know, 7, 8 p.m., stop.

Ruth: I mean, along with that, I have to say I probably think it's probably best for you to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Rhonda: Right.

Ruth: You know, not be staying up till 2 in the morning playing video games or whatever, you know, so you know, it can all be synergistic or in a positive way or in a negative way.