Insights Into Chrononutrition: The Innermost Interplay Amongst Nutrition, Metabolism and the Circadian Clock, in the Context of Epigenetic Reprogramming

Chrononutrition encompasses the concepts of metabolism, nutrition and circadian synchronization, determinant processes in ensuring the dynamic energy equilibrium of the human organism. The interrelations between the external environmental modulators and the molecular, biochemical mechanisms underlying all the integrative processes are subject to permanent adjustments and become vulnerable to changes in nutritional characteristics, temperature variations or light intensity, to the detection of acute or chronic stress factors. Accordingly, it is of overwhelming importance to identify the biochemical mechanisms of transforming the dietary nutrients, the principles of energy metabolism, the particularities of nutritional states in direct interdependence with the endocrine changes that occur consequently, the nutritional ketosis and the particular characteristics of the use of ketone bodies in physiological situations, but also particular pathological conditions, and last but not least, the ambivalent impact between chronobiological factors and metabolic balance. All these facts converge towards a stable fingerprint of the epigenome on all molecular mechanisms that provide the homeostasis of the entire organism.