Research

Hormonal

Circadian misalignment induces a gene expression profile in skeletal muscle that favors fatty acid metabolism over glucose metabolism, potentially leading to substrate competition and reduced insulin sensitivity.

Your muscles change how they use fuel based on your schedule. When you are misaligned (e.g., working nights), your muscles switch to burning more fat and less glucose, which can interfere with insulin's ability to store glucose. This is driven by changes in gene expression. Maintaining a consistent schedule helps keep your muscle metabolism balanced.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
transcriptome analysis revealed the human PPAR pathway as a key player in the disturbed energy metabolism upon circadian misalignment... fatty acid metabolism and PPAR signaling are most strongly increased from 7 AM to 7 PM in the misaligned condition
Jakob Wefers et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2018

Why this rating

Robust transcriptomic analysis with pathway enrichment, but the causal link to insulin resistance is inferred from gene expression rather than direct functional validation in humans.

Source

Circadian misalignment induces fatty acid metabolism gene profiles and compromises insulin sensitivity in human skeletal muscle

Jakob Wefers et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2018

DOI 10.1073/pnas.1722295115

crossover · n=14Cited 195×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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