High Fat Sugar Diet Induces Skeletal Muscle Degeneration and the Beneficial Effect of Time Restricted Feeding

Abstract

High fat sugar diet (HFS) is a high-energy diet and has been shown to lead to obesity and many related disorders. Obesity is a risk factor for a lot of diseases and previous studies have suggested that obesity is associated with muscle dysfunction. The first objective of this study is to investigate whether HFS could result in impaired skeletal muscle function. The results showed that HFS damaged glucose metabolism of skeletal muscle and increased inflammatory pathways. The HFS further reduced the level of amyloid beta degradation enzymes and led to the accumulation of amyloid beta and phosphorylated tau. Thus HFS demonstrated an ability to induce skeletal muscle degeneration. Circadian rhythms are considered closely associated with body normal metabolism, and disruption of circadian rhythms will obviously affect body conditions. Time restricted feeding (TRF) is an intervention that limits the eating time instead of reducing the total calorie intake. Earlier studies have shown that TRF could help with weight loss and lipid regulation. TRF also showed its potential to restore muscle performance of flies. Therefore, the second part of this study is to examine whether TRF could reverse the impaired skeletal muscle function that is induced by HFS. The results showed that TRF reduced the level of negatively associated proteins, including MuSK and myostatin in skeletal muscle, and TRF also reduced inflammatory markers and improved the accumulation of amyloid beta and hyperphosphorylated tau. All of these evidences proved that TRF is a beneficial method to treat muscle dysfunctions that induced by HFS.