Professor Russell Foster

speaker

92 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 3 Feb

Professor Russell Foster’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.

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ZOE Science & Nutrition · Recap: The hidden clock controlling your health | Professor Russell Foster · 3 Feb 2026 podcast

Very important studies on night shift nurses showing higher rates of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, for example, and in long-haul pilots, prostate cancer.

metabolic abnormalities such as diabetes 2 and obesity.

And finally, the big one, depression and psychosis are made much worse by sleep and circadian rhythm disruption.

So to answer your question briefly- That doesn't sound very good, Russell.

No, it's not.

It's terrible.

I mean, it's quite clear that this disruption is so much more inconvenient than feeling tired at the wrong time of day.

This has a massive impact

Yes, and this is a really important area.

So the empirical evidence shows that if we have a constant infusion of glucose throughout the day, our ability to clear that glucose is much more efficient during the first half of the day, and it tails off towards evening and then becomes pretty inefficient.

So in fact, you're getting rid of glucose very effectively during the first half of the day, but less effectively during the second half of the day.

And of course, by having higher levels of glucose, you can generate glucose intolerance, and you're on the way to type 2 diabetes.

Other experiments have shown that if you load your calories at breakfast and lunchtime versus lunchtime and evening,

you know, let's say 2000 calories, which were designed to promote weight loss, the weight loss was much more effective during the first half, if you had your calories during the first half of the day, rather than the second half of the day.

So there's this circadian modulation of our metabolism.

So you think, well, hang on, this is crazy.

I mean, society now often misses breakfast.

It'll often have a lunch at the workplace.

And then finally, after the commute home, you have your large meal.

But this large meal in the evening is a recent occurrence in human behaviour.

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