Russell G. Foster

Now, it's only an hour, but how smug did you feel the other day when the clocks went back? For me, that extra hour of sleep was delightful.

But it got us thinking about what health benefits and consequences there can be from changing the clocks every spring and autumn, and gave us a perfect excuse to call up Professor Russell Foster, no relation, who is Director of the Sleep and Circadian Institute in Oxford.

Russell, I hear you're a man with rhythm, circadian rhythms.

Can you tell us a little bit about it?

I think that if you can accommodate the sleeping habits of your partner, then it shows a flexibility of mind and attitude, which means that all the other stuff that's thrown at you is easier to deal with.

Who knows?

Thank you, Professor Russell Foster, who had some good health advice there, but also some good relationship tips.

Multi-talented experts on this programme.

Let's start with the brain.

We spoke about the importance of daylight for setting the central clock in your circadian system, your body clock system, in our episode with Professor Russell Foster.

The reason is that your internal clock doesn't tick at precisely 24 hours.

On average, it's about 24.2 hours, so you have to reset it each day, otherwise it would drift over time, and several months later you would have gone an entire cycle around the 24-hour clock.

Well, he, he, he, we aren't that close because he did, I didn't see much of him.

But when, um, my college joined Imperial College, there was one man in particular called Professor Russell, uh, Russell Foster, who's now a professor at Oxford, but he was one of the professors at, I don't know, no, he might've been a reader actually at Imperial, and he came down and took me under his wing and h- helped me, welcome me into Imperial and because I was, I hadn't got a PhD, a clinician is a very oddball in an academic environment.

You know, I was the only person in the common room without a PhD, and I felt really, you know...

I didn't, they didn't make me feel uncomfortable, but I felt inadequate because I hadn't got a PhD, and Russell was really kind to me.

And I was looking, I had to find about 60, two lots of 30, small student projects every year for them to do in their final year, and Russell helped me with lots of them, and he w- is basically interested in circadian rhythm, and this is where you guys should be interested in circadian rhythm.

You are already doing and aware of everything I'm gonna say, but the microbiome will back you up because there is circadian rhythm in the bacteria in the gut, and they will do things variously to you over the day because they have their own circadian rhythm And they're now un- elucidating the molecular clock that drives the circadian rhythm.

And prior to this, I tried to get hold of Russell, and I've looked in the b- he's produced a very small generalized book on circadian rhythm recently, and I had a quick flip through.

I couldn't actually find any reference to the microbiome, so I'm gonna try and get hold of him, because his guys or his research people must be doing something on this.