A high-fat diet can affect the balance of circadian rhythms, your biological clock that regulates the activity of enzymes and hormones involved in metabolism. Disturbance of the circadian rhythms can lead to hormone imbalance, obesity, psychological disorders, sleep disorders and cancer.

Light is the strongest factor affecting the circadian clock, but new experiments with laboratory mice show a cause-and-effect relation between diet and biological clock imbalance.

Researchers tested how fasting and a high-fat diet might affect adiponectin signaling in the liver. Adiponectin is involved in glucose and lipid metabolism. A high-fat diet resulted in a phase delay of this circadian rhythm-guided process. High fat-induced changes in the biological clock and the adiponectin signaling pathway may help explain the disruption of other clock-controlled systems associated with metabolic disorders, such as blood pressure levels and the sleep/wake cycle.