How Can Chocolate for Breakfast Improve Sleep Cycles?

 Throughout many occupations, shift times and long commutes can impact sleep cycles.

This is especially true for those working night shifts and transcontinental jobs, who experience

extreme irregularity in their sleep cycle due to their careers. While there are many ways to

combat these effects, this article highlights how chocolate for breakfast can improve the day-

night activity of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in jet lag and shift-work models.

To create an experimental model for jet lag, researchers divided adult Wistar rats into

three groups. Each of the groups was exposed to a 6 h phase advance during their light-dark

cycle to simulate the effects of the acute jet-lag condition. Within each group, the rats received

either 5 grams of chocolate at the beginning of the new night (CH-N), at the beginning of the

previous night (CH-P), or they did not receive chocolate at all (JL). The chocolate was given at

these scheduled times accordingly. The day-night pattern of the SCN is shown to have high

levels of c-Fos in the early light phase and low levels in the early night phase. These levels were

consistent in the CH-N group but were lost in the JL and CH-P, showing the benefits of the

breakfast chocolate.

A shift-work model was also created. The shift-work conditions were replicated by

exposing the Wistar rats to activity during their biological rest phase. Over four weeks, the rats

began exhibiting symptoms of internal desynchrony. The shift-worker rats were divided into

three groups, ones that received chocolate for breakfast/beginning of nocturnal activity (WCH-

B), ones that received chocolate for dinner/beginning of rest phase (WCH-D), and those that did

not receive any chocolate (WRK). Similarly, to the jet-lag model, the WCH-B group showed

consistency in the day-night pattern and cFos levels compared to the control group. Additionally,

the WCH-D and the WRK group both showed a decrease in activity in the SCN region, with the

WCH-D losing rhythm as well.

This article continues to discuss the further impacts of breakfast chocolate on day-night

activity among the two experimental groups, as well as the metabolic effects of dinner chocolate.

From this article, it can be concluded that scheduled breakfast chocolate can make improvements

to biological and circadian rhythms. Going into the article, I believed that breakfast chocolate

was truly just an early-day breakfast. Once reading the article, I now understand that eating

chocolate at the beginning of the active phase can improve and readjust SCN patterns. It is an

interesting tool that can be utilized by those that may go into a field that requires irregular sleep

schedules.

https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.silk.library.umass.edu/pmc/articles/PMC7148329/

Posted by: Ritika Koirala (2)

Comments

  1. Victoria FlynnSeptember 26, 2022 at 6:47 PM

    Hi Ritika, I was very intrigued by your blog title. I had some previous knowledge on how chocolate can have dispersed health benefits but never imagined a correlation with sleep schedule. You explained the steps of the experiments with great detail and it was interesting to see how the SCN levels changed. Would mind explaining what the c-Fos levels are? It's fascinating how what we eat can impact seemingly minor aspects of our lives.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haya UsmaniSeptember 28, 2022 at 8:23 AM

    Hi Ritika! This article was very interesting to read. It was surprising to see that chocolate actually has a benefit. It is intriguing to learn that chocolate affects the SCN which the further affects the circadian rhythm in our body. Were there any other impacts chocolate had on the body while this experiment was carried out? I wonder if there are any other things we eat that do not know the affects of just yet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2022 at 1:41 PM

      Hey Haya! Yeah, this article made me wonder if other food might benefit my health that I might have believed to be completely unhealthy. One part of the experiment that was interesting was when they looked into the effects of breakfast chocolate versus dinner chocolate. What they found was that dinner chocolate would negatively impact levels of c-Fos in your SCN, but it was also found to increase body weight at a significantly higher rate than breakfast chocolate. Breakfast chocolate was decreasing the rate at which the rats were gaining weight. This was just a partially interesting side-effect of the breakfast and dinner chocolates.

      - Ritika Koirala

      Delete
  3. Adyelis M. Colon MartinezSeptember 28, 2022 at 9:57 AM

    Hello Ritika! This was such a fascinating article to read. The title is absolutely grabbing and the blog post kept me interested all the way throughout to the end. Before reading the article/blog post I was under the impression that chocolate like any other sugary sweet was bad for you. I have always heard that chocolate is something that you should indulge in if you wish every once in a while, not something that is actualy beneficial. I am curiouse about something you mentioned about the further impacs of breakfast chocolate. What are those further impacts? Or is the improvement of sleep patterns the only benefit?
    - Adyelis M. Colon Martinez

    ReplyDelete
  4. AlannaSeptember 28, 2022 at 12:35 PM

    Sending this post to my roommates who make fun of me for eating Reeses first thing in the morning! Do you know what is is about the chocolate that improves sleep cycles or could it be any sweet treat?

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2022 at 1:21 PM

    I never really was a person who craved sweets or enjoyed them on a daily basis. This was very interesting to learn about and I’m just curious as to why it was chocolate that was used in this experiment and what ingredient in particular helps with the better sleep. Do you think it’s the cacao or the sugar? What else could it be?
    - Kelly

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2022 at 1:41 PM

      Hey Kelly! I’d heard about the health benefits of eating chocolate, but I always thought it was just something that people said! It’s one of the reasons I wanted to look into this article to know if there was some truth to what others were saying. But to answer your question, they conducted another experiment within the research to identify which element of the chocolate is the best at re-entrainment. It was found that rats who consumed chocolate for breakfast had a 2.4 h difference between their current and new acrophase, and the ingredient with the closest data to that was 3.8 h in sugar. Therefore, I would say sugar has the highest effect on the chocolate, but I’m sure the other ingredients help it bring down the difference between acrophases as well.

      - Ritika Koirala

      Delete
  6. Gina PasqualeSeptember 28, 2022 at 1:36 PM

    This was very interesting to read, as I had not known of any benefits to eating chocolate besides getting a little energy boost. It is fascinating that these benefits are dependent on the time in your circadian rhythm you eat chocolate. Are there other foods that cause similar effects?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Owen BradleySeptember 28, 2022 at 4:12 PM

    I was surprised that chocolate actually has a benefit to your health. A paper circulated many years ago that claimed that eating chocolate was healthy. It claimed that it reduced the risk of certain types of cancer or something like that. It turned out that the paper was intentionally wrong, to show how easy it is to publish and spread bad science. I didn't think there were actually any health benefits to eating it. I'm pleasantly surprised to discover I was wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anna NiezreckiSeptember 28, 2022 at 6:16 PM

    Hi Ritika! What an interesting subject! I have never heard of chocolate improving sleep cycles before. I liked that you included the rat experiment summary in your post rather than just having an explanation because it backed what you had to say and made the conclusion more valid. I do wonder though, how much chocolate do you have to eat for it to really make a difference in your sleep cycle?
    -Anna Niezrecki

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2022 at 6:41 PM

    Hi Ritika! Since chocolate has always been my favorite food, your article caught my attention. I was wondering, do you think that caffeine content of chocolate plays any role in this? I want any excuse to eat chocolate, but it is very interesting to see this study because it makes me wonder what is in the chocolate that is causing these findings. If the study continues from rat to human trials, I would be willing to contribute to science by eating chocolate. This post was helpful to me because I do not know much about sleep cycles.
    - Samantha Bunner

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2022 at 8:51 PM

    Hey Ritika! This is a very interesting topic for discussion (I always love another good reason to eat chocolate). I heard of dark chocolate being beneficial in certain ways but not chocolate for breakfast. This leads me to my question: was there a particular type of chocolate used (dark, milk, white), and were different brands experimented to test if particular ingredients had more impact on the data?

    - Anthony Nassar

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2022 at 1:41 PM

      Hi Anthony! The chocolate used in the experiments was 5g Kinder maxi Ferrero (milk chocolate). I had also heard that eating dark chocolate could offer different types of health benefits, so I would've thought that the experimenters would have used it rather than other types of chocolate. I wish that they had tested the different types or brands of chocolate as well because there are so many different ingredients in each brand that it would be good to know which one works the best.

      - Ritika Koirala

      Delete
  11. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2022 at 8:58 PM

    Hi Ritika! I remember reading something a long time ago about the benefits of eating chocolate in the morning so this really caught my attention. It is definitely interesting to know that chocolate can aid in improving circadian rhythms. However, I was wondering if you knew of any foods that has the opposite effect (other than things that contain caffeine)?
    - Amy Perez

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousSeptember 29, 2022 at 10:49 AM

    Hi Ritika! I have always heard that Chocolate in the morning could have positive side effects, so was very interested to read this. One of my classmates in high school was from Russia and always came to school with a piece of dark chocolate. It seemed like it was a part of his culture and some other people in our school started to also eat chocolate in the morning. Would there be a reason that dark chocolate would have better effects on your sleep than milk chocolate?
    Brenna MacDonald

    ReplyDelete

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