Progressives: The Real World Versus Neverland

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Authored by David Stolinsky via The Gatestone Institute,

"Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child," Cicero astutely observed. For many self-described progressives today, however, this seems not to be a drawback. On the contrary, like adolescents -- insisting that they are grown-ups when their parents get in the way of their fun, but then running home for all their basic needs and creature comforts -- such people seem to give no thought to the past and equally little to the future.

Many people like this are said to suffer from a "Peter Pan Syndrome": the inability or unwillingness to grow up. In thought, they seem to lean to the political left. They want the government to take on the role of parent, even if that involves maxing out the country's "credit cards," so that even for a short time, they can live beyond what they earn.

Possibly in a hurry not to concern themselves with "dreary details," they pressed for a huge health-care bill, passed in 2010, that forever changed how we receive − or do not receive − medical care. It seems the details of the bill were too time-consuming and complex for the world of tweets and sound bites for them to pay attention to what it actually contained. When the bill was being debated, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

Many of these children in adult bodies were told, and actually believed, that better health care for everyone, including an unlimited number of illegal immigrants, would be attainable at a low cost, if only the government were to run it. That Medicare and Medicaid, both of which the U.S. government currently runs -- as well as the UK's National Health Service -- are going broke does not appear to have occurred to them. So they persist in their fantasy that government-controlled health care is not an ill but a cure.

Their fantasy is not restricted to the realm of health care. Many of these children in adult bodies believe that many, if not all, major aspects of the economy would be more efficient if the government ran them. This is in spite of the fact that the facilities currently run by the government -- from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the Department of Motor Vehicles -- are inefficient, unhelpful or sometimes even downright hostile -- to the people they are meant to serve.

Many children in adult bodies also seem not to know that Socialism failed in the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, China, North Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba, and is now failing in Venezuela. Yet, illogically, they appear to believe that they themselves could make it work. The irrational wish is evidently stronger than rational arithmetic.

These victims of arrested emotional development seem to confuse good motives with good results. They want better health care for a greater number of people at a lesser cost; so they fantasize that they can achieve it without denying care to those who are too old, too sick or too expensive to receive it. They kind-heartedly want a "more equal distribution of wealth"; so they fantasize that they can maneuver it without penalizing and discouraging the productive members of society, while rewarding and encouraging the unproductive ones. Yet this is exactly what has happened wherever the redistribution of wealth was tried.

These people, like all of us, want to be liked; so they fantasize that if they treat others kindly, the behavior will be reciprocated. They refer respectfully to the unelected theocratic leader of Iran as "Supreme Leader," even as oppressed Iranian demonstrators are arrested, beaten, tortured or killed.

Although bullies -- from those who terrorize fellow students in the schoolyard, to those who commit terrorist acts against innocent people across the world -- speak the language of hatred and force, children in adult bodies persist in their fantasy that if they and their government would only project appeasement and weakness, regimes such as that in Tehran would lay down their arms and hate-filled hegemonic aims. Hence, presumably, the support among progressives for the Iran nuclear deal that former President Barack Obama pushed through, without regard to its potential cost of a fully nuclear-capable Iran to America and the rest of the world after the deal expires.

These adults still clinging hard to their wishes seem to believe that crime is caused by poverty or other societal ills, and conclude that criminals are victims of society, such as Kathryn Michelle Steinle, who was shot to death in 2015 by illegal immigrant José Inés García Zárate. Garcia Zarate, a five-time deportee and drug offender. While Steinle met a cruel and untimely death, Garcia Zarate, not only was acquitted of murder and manslaughter, but aroused sympathy on the left.

These adults who apparently do not want to grow up call those who disagree with them "fascists" or "Nazis" -- without knowing the history of either -- yet accept as gospel any statements or actions, no matter how questionable, on the part of those who agree with their romanticized positions.

Like Peter Pan, these children wish to live in Neverland – a place that, in the real word, does not exist. Fictional characters, however, have the advantage of enjoying adventures with imaginary dangers. In the real world, unfortunately, people who never grow up may enjoy themselves for a time, but sooner or later the all-too-real dangers they had ignored, like an overstretched credit card, catch up with them. By the time their future is lost to them, it will be too late to wake up or rectify the situation. This means that the adults among us who acknowledge and take on the responsibilities of adulthood must be even more vigilant in exposing fantasies as child-like and preventing these daydreamers from doing even more damage than they already have done.

In the real world, people who never grow up may enjoy themselves for a time, but sooner or later the all-too-real dangers they had ignored, like an overstretched credit card, catch up with them. By the time their future is lost to them, it will be too late to wake up or rectify the situation. (Image sources: Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons)

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Monsanto-Bayer: Eliminating The Name Will Not Erase The Criminal History

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Authored by Ruchi Shroff via Common Dreams,

Cancelling out Monsanto’s name and keeping only that of Bayer, does not mean forgetting the wrongdoings of a company which, according to the verdict of the Monsanto Tribunal of The Hague, is stained with crimes of ecocide. With Bayer’s official takeover of Monsanto, the giant multinational also inherits its liabilities.

On the eve of the start of the integration process, Monsanto has been held liable for causing cancer through the use of its glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup and ordered to pay $289 million of damages to the plaintiff Dewayne Lee Johnson in the first landmark case, settled in California in mid August 2018. The jury also found that Monsanto “acted with malice or oppression.”

According to Reuters, the number of lawsuits brought against Bayer’s newly acquired Monsanto is approximately 8000 in the US alone. UN experts Ms Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur on the right to food and Mr. Dainius Pūras, Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health, defined the ruling “a significant recognition of the human rights of victims, and the responsibilities of chemical companies.”

Revelations in reports published last year, most notably the “Monsanto Papers” and the “Poison Papers“, have shed light on strategies of big agrochemical groups to expand their empires: from lobbying, interference in government agencies’ proceedings, attacks in collusion with institutions on independent science, to mega mergers and acquisitions.

For the first time part of these documents were shown to a jury, which were able, among other things to also see that, “at least starting 20 years ago, Monsanto has known that their product can cause cancer, and has gone out of its way to ignore it and/or fight any science that suggests a link”, as declared to Democracy Now by Brent Wisner, the lead trial counsel for Dewayne Lee Johnson in his lawsuit against Monsanto. Added to this, in the same week, California’s Supreme Court rejected a challenge by Monsanto to the state’s decision to include glyphosate in its Proposition 65 list of carcinogens.

On other fronts, other lawsuits have been filed in the US by farmers’groups, and seed sellers are pushing environmental regulators to bar farmers from spraying dicamba weed killer, key ingredient of the new Monsanto-Bayer and Basf products, which has been causing drift-related crop injuries sweeping across rural America in the last 2 years; in Europe, the special committee on pesticides authorization process reacted to the US court’s decision by calling once again for a ban of glyphosate in the continent; in Sri Lanka, where a fatal chronic kidney disease (CKDu) has been linked to glyphosate use, a group formed by farmers’ organizations, scientists and affected families declared that they are ready to take Bayer/Monsanto and other glyphosate herbicide manufacturers to the Supreme Court.

Vietnam is also demanding compensation for victims of exposure to the Agent Orange, the chemical produced by Monsanto for the US military during the Vietnam War.

A clear signal of the fact that Monsanto’s past is set to haunt Bayer in spite of all efforts to eliminate the brand name, is that the week following the verdict, Bayer’s shares fell sharply, approximately by 10 – 12% ($12.5 Billion).  It is interesting to note that the stock exchange, the very core of today’s globalized economy, seems to be quite unforgiving.

Navdanya, along with civil society organizations around the world, will continue to monitor, report and protest so that the agroecological, transition also recently discussed at the FAO‘s Symposium on Agroecology, becomes a reality and that local, circular and inclusive economies, nutritious and healthy food, become the norm once again After fifty years of an intensive, unhealthy food production model that has devastated our agriculture system by polluting the environment, producing poisonous food and without remotely solving the hunger problem, has instead further undermined people’s food sovereignty. Industrial agriculture in fact can claim only a relatively small portion of the global food production. The majority of the food we consume is, actually, still produced by small and medium farmers, while the vast majority of crops coming from the industrial sector, such as maize and soya, is mainly used as animal feed or to produce biofuels.

Navdanya International has invited leading experts from around the world for the drafting of the Manifesto “Food for Health. Cultivating Biodiversity, Cultivating Health.” The Manifesto, which will be widely disseminated to farmers and citizens, governments and stakeholders, aims at highlighting the inseparable link between food and health, developing comprehensive strategies to overcome the model of industrial agriculture, encouraging the convergence and action of the movement for Agroecology and Public Health movements to reach a common vision of sustainable development, which must be equitable and inclusive, based on biodiversity and poison-free food and farming systems.

The work of Navdanya International, from the creation of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and the publication of four Manifestos, has focused on promoting a new agricultural and economic paradigm, and the belief that solutions to the multiple crises facing humanity today can come from a determined shift away from the present profit and competitive-based paradigm to a model that has at its keystone the protection of the earth and environment and respect of the rights and dignity of people. In biodiverse organic farming, in Seed Freedom for farmers and citizens, in circular economies based on meaningful work, we can find solutions to the environmental, climate, social and economic crisis. We will continue to reclaim citizens’ rights, as well as those of small and medium producers, who, despite being crushed by the current market mechanisms, are the only ones providing us with healthy and nutritious food.

Furthermore, we will not stop fighting this attempt of multinationals to takeover of our food, health and democracy which, instead of being regulated by our elected representatives, are increasingly able to take on the role of regulators through heavy lobbying actions, thus posing a serious threat to our own democratic system.

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Google Rigging Search Results Is A Fact - Freedom Outpost

https://freedomoutpost.com/google-rigging-search-results-is-a-fact/

Protecting Free Speech in Fearful Times - Censored Notebook

https://projectcensored.org/protecting-free-speech-in-fearful-times/

Never Let Anyone Call You Crazy For Doubting Establishment War Narratives

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/never-let-anyone-call-you-crazy-for-doubting-establishment-war-narratives-385aec06ad11

The nuclear accidents we're aware of are only the tip of the radiation disaster iceberg

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The World Nuclear Association says its goal is "to increase global support for nuclear energy" and it repeatedly claims on its website: "There have only been three major accidents across 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of operation in 32 countries." The WNA and other nuclear power supporters acknowledge Three Mile Island in 1979 (US), Chernobyl in 1986 (USSR), and Fukushima in 2011 (Japan) as "major" disasters. But claiming that these radiation gushers were the worst ignores the frightening series of large-scale disasters that have been caused by uranium mining, reactors, nuclear weapons, and radioactive waste. Some of the world's other major accidental radiation releases indicate that the Big Three are just the tip of the iceberg. CHALK RIVER (Ontario), Dec. 2, 1952: The first major commercial reactor disaster occurred at this Canadian reactor on the Ottawa River when it caused a loss-of-coolant, a hydrogen explosion and a meltdown, releasing 100,000 curies of radioactivity to the air. In comparison, the official government position is that Three Mile Island released about 15 curies, although radiation monitors failed or went off-scale.

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Flu-pocalypse: The shocking failure of the flu vaccine exposed

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(Natural News) Back-to-school season is here. Alongside sales, shopping and students, you may have noticed that something else is back: The flu shot. The push to get vaccinated is in full swing, whether you’re at the grocery store or simply watching the evening news. “It’s never too early to get the flu shot,” vaccine pushers...

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The Economy: Winter Is Coming

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Authored by Christopher Casey via The Mises Institute,

Fans of HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones, know well the motto of House Stark: “Winter is Coming.” This motto warns of impending doom, whether brought on by the Starks themselves, devastating multi-year, cold weather, or something far more ominous north of the Wall.

At least since Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff wrote The Major Economic Cycles in 1925, recessions have been associated with winter weather. Although Kondratieff’s theories contained as much fantasy as Game of Thrones, using seasons as an analogy for the stages of a business cycle is intuitive. If spring represents recovery, and summer the peak of economic growth, then the U.S. economy may well be in autumn. All should be as wary as the subjects of Westeros (the realm of focus in Game of Thrones).

Why Winter is Coming

Few mainstream economists currently foresee a recession. They cite “strong” (a new-found, favorite term in Federal Open Market Committee minutes) economic statistics, a “healthy” stock market (despite gains highly concentrated in the so-called “FANG” stocks), and few warning signs among the “leading indicators." But the same exact sentiment existed before the last recession. Most infamously, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in January 2008 – exactly one month after the recession technically began: “the Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.”

How could Chairman Bernanke have been so wrong then, and why may mainstream economists be likewise wrong today? The answer lies in their erroneous business cycle theories. Without a theory which accurately describes recessions, watching leading indicators or other signs of a slowdown are as effective as reading tea leaves. One can only predict by first understanding causality.

The Austrian school of economics explains business cycles, for it describes their phenomena (e.g., the “cluster of error” exhibited by businesses and economic actors), why they are recurring, and why they first repeatedly appeared in the 19th century (with fractional-reserve banking and/or central banks). In short, when the money supply is artificially increased, interest rates are decreased and distorted. As interest rates are a universal market signal to all businesses and economic actors, investments and purchases which previously appeared unprofitable or untenable now seem economically profitable or reasonable. However, these expenditures are actually “malinvested” relative to the natural level of interest rates. When interest rates revert to their natural level and structure, a recession ensues. Recessions are an inevitable condition which corrects malinvestments by returning capital to rightful purpose.

What causes the artificial boom to end and the winter to begin? Ludwig von Mises offered a succinct explanation:

The boom can last only as long as the credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown upon the loan market.

In the U.S., the growth rate of “additional quantities of fiduciary media” has flatlined (as represented by the red line below). The most relevant monetary metric to analyze is the Austrian definition of the money supply known as “True Money Supply” (“TMS”). Developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno (and frequently commented upon by Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute), TMS more accurately captures Federal Reserve activity than traditional measures such as M2. Since March 2017, it has averaged a mere expansion rate of just over 4%.

Since Austrian business cycle theory describes the impact of monetary expansion and contraction upon interest rates which, in turn, impacts the economy, are interest rates likewise signaling a possible end to the current, artificial economic expansion?

When Winter is Coming

Interest rates have certainly risen. Since breaking below 1.4% just over two years ago, the 10-year Treasury has traded with a yield close to 3.0% for the majority of 2018. But in forecasting a recession, timing and probability are better served by analyzing the structure of interest rates (known as the yield curve) rather than the overall interest rate level.

The yield curve represents a graphical depiction of fixed-interest rate security yields plotted against the amount of time until their maturity. Various methods of measuring the “flatness” of the yield curve exist, but one of the most popular is the yield on a long-dated bond (e.g., the 10-year Treasury) minus the yield on a shorter-term bond (e.g., the 2-year Treasury). Based on this methodology, the yield curve has flattened extensively over the last several years to levels last observed just prior to the Great Recession.

Historically, a yield curve which flattens enough to become inverted; that is, when short-term interest rates are higher than longer-term interest rates, a recession typically follows. An inverted yield curve possesses a unique power of predictability.

As explained by economist Robert Murphy, in foreshadowing every recession since 1950:

Not only has there only been one false positive (which even here was still associated with a slowdown), but every actual recession in this timeframe has had an inverted (or nearly inverted) yield curve precede it. In other words, there are no false negatives either when it comes to the yield curve’s predictive powers in the postwar period.

The acknowledgement of the yield curve’s prognosticative capability extends beyond Austrian school economists such as Dr. Murphy, for numerous studies – many by Federal Reserve economists – cite this phenomenon. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in introducing some of this research, recognizes “the empirical regularity that the slope of the yield curve is a reliable predictor of future real economic activity.”

Recognition is different from understanding as mainstream economists are largely unable to offer an explanation. However, yield curve recession signals adhere well to Austrian business cycle theory which demonstrates the importance of banks in creating money and lowering interest rates (which steepens the yield curve as most of their influence resides with shorter maturities). It is the reversal of money creation – and the impact of banks on interest rates – which causes shorter-term interest rates to rise disproportionately (the typical fashion by which the yield curve flattens).

In addition, if the artificial boom ends when interest rates are no longer artificially depressed, then it stands to reason the structure of interest rates will also revert to its natural state. A flatter yield curve comports with the natural structure of interest rates expected in a free market. The Austrian-economist Jesús Huerta de Soto described the underlying reason free markets generate flatter yield curves:

...the market rate of interest tends to be the same throughout the entire time market or productive structure in society, not only intratemporally, i.e., in different areas of the market, but also intertemporally... the entrepreneurial force itself, drive by a desire for profit, will lead people to disinvest in stages in which the interest rate...is lower, relatively speaking, and to invest in stages in which the expected interest rate...is higher.

In short, the predictive power of the yield curve is matched only by the explanatory power of Austrian business cycle theory. If it continues to flatten and invert, a recession will likely follow as the previously created malinvestments are exposed.

But rather than wholeheartedly embrace yield curve analysis, high-ranking Federal Reserve officials consistently waffle at its utilization. Like Westerosi maesters in conclave to determine the advent of winter, they frequently recognize recessions only after their onset.

Conclusion

The similarities between the climate in Game of Thrones and the state of the U.S. economy are eerily similar. Prior to the recent beginning of winter, Westeros experienced an unusually long time since the last winter. Likewise, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the current U.S. expansion is the second longest ever at just over nine years (110 months).

Also, just as recessions are not phenomena endogenous to free markets (but rather, as discussed above, caused by an artificial expansion of the money supply typically produced/coordinated by central banks), so too the winters in Westeros appear to be generated from an artificial, exogenous source. As protagonist John Snow explained in describing the supernatural White Walkers: “the true enemy won't wait out the storm. He brings the storm.” The Night King is the Westerosi version of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (with the primary difference being the Night King purposely brings about winter).

Finally, like the next winter in Westeros, the next U.S. recession may prove unusually severe by historical standards. In Game of Thrones, many characters (at least the peasants) believe this winter will be the worst in 1,000 years. Given the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented monetary machinations since 2008, the next recession may well prove worse than the last one, and potentially as devastating as the Long Night.

Approximately one year ago, speaking as confidently as a Red Priestess of R’hllor, then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen believed the next recession-driven financial crisis may be averted for at least a generation or so:

Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? ...Probably that would be going too far. But I do think we're much safer... and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes, and I don't believe it will be [emphasis added].

You know nothing, Janet Yellen. Winter is coming.

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Is Trump Right About "Flipping"?

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Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

In the wake of the federal criminal conviction of former Trump official Paul Manafort and the guilty plea in federal court of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the mainstream press is singing the praises of special prosecutor (and former FBI Director) Robert Mueller and the Justice Department.

In the process, Trump’s critics are condemning his denunciation of “flipping,” the process by which federal prosecutors offer a sweet deal to criminal defendants in return for testifying against a “higher-up” who the feds are also prosecuting. The press and the anti-Trumpsters say that such a practice is part of the “rule of law” and essential to the proper administration of justice.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever else might be said about Trump, he is absolutely right on this point. The process of offering sweetheart deals to people in return for their “cooperation” to get someone else convicted has long been one of the most corrupt aspects of the federal criminal-justice system, especially as part of the federal government’s much-vaunted (and much-failed) war on drugs.

Suppose a federal criminal defendant contacts a prospective witness in a case and offers him $50,000 in return for his “cooperation” in his upcoming trial. The money will be paid as soon as the trial is over. The defendant makes it clear that he wants the witness to “tell the truth” but that his “cooperation” when he testifies at trial would be greatly appreciated.

What would happen if federal officials learned about that communication and offer? They would go ballistic. They would immediately secure an indictment for bribery and witness tampering.

What if the defendant says, “Oh, no, I wasn’t tampering with the witness. I specifically told him that I wanted him to tell the truth when he took the witness stand. I was just seeking his friendly ‘cooperation’ with my $50,000 offer to him.”?

It wouldn’t make a difference. Federal prosecutors would go after him with a vengeance on bribery and witness-tampering charges. And it is a virtual certainty that they would get a conviction.

There is good reason for that. The law recognizes that the money could serve as an inducement for the witness to lie. Even though the defendant tells him to “tell the truth,” the witness knows that the fifty grand is being paid to him to help the defendant get acquitted, especially since it is payable after the trial is over. The temptation to lie, in return for the money, becomes strong, which is why the law prohibits criminal defendants from engaging in this type of practice.

Suppose a federal prosecutor says to a witness,

“You are facing life in prison on the charges we have brought against you. But if you ‘cooperate’ with us to get John Doe, we will adjust the charges so that the most the judge can do is send you to jail for only 5 years at most. If you are really ‘cooperative,’ we will recommend that the judge give you the lowest possible sentence, perhaps even probation. Oh, one more thing, we want to make it clear that we do want you to tell the truth.”

Do you see the problem? The temptation to please the prosecutor with “cooperation” becomes tremendous. If the witness can help secure a conviction of Doe, he stands to get a much lighter sentence for his successful “cooperation.” The inducement to commit perjury oftentimes takes over, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s admonition to the witness to “tell the truth.”

Defenders of this corrupt process say that without it, prosecutors could never get convictions. That’s pure nonsense. For one thing, prosecutors can secure a conviction against the witness and then force him to testify once his case is over. That’s because a person whose case is over is unable to rely on the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying in the case against John Doe.

Moreover, the prosecutor can give what is called “use immunity” to the witness, which then forces him to testify in the case against Doe. Use immunity is not full immunity from prosecution. It simply means that the prosecutor cannot use the witness’s testimony against Doe to convict the witness at his trial. The prosecutor must convict him with other evidence.

But even if it means that the prosecutor is unable to secure some convictions, the question has to be asked: Do we want prosecutors securing convictions in this way? After all, there is a related question that must be asked: How many innocent people are convicted by perjured testimony from a witness who is doing his best to “cooperate” with the prosecution in the hope of getting a lighter sentence?

Given all the accolades being accorded Mueller, it is a shame that he has chosen to go down the same corrupt road that all other federal prosecutors have traveled. He didn’t have to do that. He could have led the way out of this immoral morass by taking a firm and public stand against this corrupt procedure. The fact that he has chosen instead to participate in it is a shame, to say the least.

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Time-restricted eating can overcome the bad effects of faulty genes and unhealthy diet

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sukrit3d/Shutterstock.com

Timing our meals can fend off diseases caused by bad genes or bad diet. Everything in our body is programmed to run on a 24-hour or circadian time table that repeats every day. Nearly a dozen different genes work together to produce this 24-hour circadian cycle. These clocks are present in all of our organs, tissues and even in every cell. These internal clocks tell us when to sleep, eat, be physically active and fight diseases. As long as this internal timing system work well and we obey them, we stay healthy.

But what happens when our clocks are broken or begin to malfunction?

Mice that lack critical clock genes are clueless about when to do their daily tasks; they eat randomly during day and night and succumb to obesity, metabolic disease, chronic inflammation and many more diseases.

Even in humans, genetic studies point to several gene mutations that compromise our circadian clocks and make us prone to an array of diseases from obesity to cancer. When these faulty clock genes are combined with an unhealthy diet, the risks and severity of these diseases skyrocket.

My lab studies how circadian clocks work and how they readjust when we fly from one time zone to another or when we switch between day and night shift. We knew that the first meal of the day synchronizes our circadian clock to our daily routine. So, we wanted to learn more about timing of meals and the implications for health.

Time-restricted eating

Eating within an eight- to 12-hour window could diminish the impact of a bad diet and a broken body clock. amornchaijj/Shutterstock.com

A few years ago we made a surprising discovery that when mice are allowed to eat within a consistent eight- to 12-hour period without reducing their daily caloric intake, they remain healthy and do not succumb to diseases even when they are fed unhealthy food rich in sugar or fat.

The benefit surpasses any modern medicine. Such an eating pattern – popularly called time restricted eating – also helps overweight and obese humans reduce body weight and lower their risk for many chronic diseases.

Decades of research had taught us what and how much we eat matters. But the new discovery about when we eat matters raised many questions.

How does simply restricting your eating times alter so many elements of personal health? The timing of eating is like an external time cue that signals the internal circadian clock to keep a balance between nourishment and repair. During the eating period, metabolism was geared toward nourishment. The gut and liver better absorbed nutrients from food, and used some for fueling the body while storing the rest.

During the fasting period, metabolism switched to rejuvenation. Unwanted chemicals were broken down, stored fat was burned and damaged cells were repaired. The next day, after the first bite, the switch flipped from rejuvenation to nourishment. This rhythm continued every day. We thought that timing of eating and fasting was giving cues to the internal clock and the clock was flipping the switch between nourishment and rejuvenation every day. However, it was not clear if a normal circadian clock was necessary to mediate the benefits of time restricted eating or whether just restricted eating times alone could flip the daily switch.

Eating late at night can disrupt circadian rhythms and raise the risk of chronic diseases including obesity. Ulza/Shutterstock.com

What if you have a broken internal clock?

In a new study, we took genetically engineered animals that lacked a functioning circadian clock either in the liver or in every cell of the body.

These mice, with faulty clocks don’t know when to eat and when to stay away from food. So, they eat randomly and develop multiple diseases. The disease severity increases if they are fed an unhealthy diet.

To test if time restricted eating works with a damaged or dysfunctional clock, we simply divided these mutant mice into two different groups – one group got to eat whenever they wanted and the other group was only given access to food during restricted times. Both groups ate the identical number of calories, but the restricted eaters finished their daily ration within nine to 10 hours.

We thought that even though these mice had restricted eating times, having the bad clock gene would doom them to obesity and many metabolic diseases. But to our utter surprise the restricted eating times trumped the bad effects of faulty clock genes. The mice without a functioning clock that were destined to be morbidly sick, were as healthy as normal mice when they consumed food during a certain period.

The results have many implications for human health.

The good news

First of all, it raises a big question: What is the connection between our genetically encoded circadian clock timing system and external time of eating? Do these two different timing systems work together like co-pilots in a plane, so that even if one is incapacitated, the other one can still fly the plane?

As we age, our body clocks become less accurate, and we become more prone to chronic diseases. Keeping regular, restricted eating times can keep us healthy longer. LightField Studios/Shurstock.com

Deep analyses of mice in our experiment revealed that time restricted eating triggers many internal programs that improve our body’s resilience – enabling us to fight off any unhealthy consequences of bad nutrition or any other stress. This boost in internal resilience may be the key to these surprising health benefits.

For human health the message is simple, as I say in my new book “The Circadian Code.” Even if we have faulty circadian genes as in many congenital diseases, such as Prader-Willi syndrome or Smith-Magenis syndrome, or carry a malfunctioning copy of nearly a dozen different clock genes, as long as we have some discipline and restrict eating times, we can still fend off the bad effects of bad genes.

Similarly, other researchers have shown as we get older our circadian clock system weakens. The genes don’t function correctly so our sleep-wake cycles are disrupted – just as if we had a faulty clock. So, lifestyle becomes more important for older people who are at higher risk for many chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease and cancer.

As a potential translation to human health, we have created a website where anyone from anywhere in the world can sign up for an academic study and download a free app called MyCircadianClock and start self-monitoring the timing of eating and sleeping.

Research has shown that our daily eating, sleeping and activity patterns can affect health and determine our long-term risk for various diseases. This app is part of a research project that uses smartphones to advance research into biological rhythms in the real world, while also helping you understand your body’s rhythms. http://mycircadianclock.org/#about-study, CC BY-SA

The app provides tips and guidance on how to adopt a time restricted eating lifestyle to improve health and prevent or manage chronic diseases. By collecting data from people with varying risk for disease, we can explore how eating times can help to increase our healthy lifespan.

We understand everyone’s lifestyle around home, work and other responsibilities is unique and one size may not fit all. So, we hope people can use the app and some tips to build their personalized circadian routine. By selecting their own time window of eight to 12 hours for eating that best fits their lifestyle, they may reap many health benefits.

Satchin Panda receives funding from National Institute of Health, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, American Federation of Aging Research, the Glenn Center for Aging; the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. He is affiliated with the Center for Circadian Biology at the University of California, San Diego.

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