Welcome to The Weekly Dose, you beautiful bags of microbes… this week we’re going to be diving into a secret cause of constipation, the protein maxxing trend and a hard lesson I learned! Enjoy!

A Gamechanger For Constipation!

Most people think constipation means just “not enough fiber” or “not enough water.”
But sometimes, your gut isn’t slow because it’s clogged… it’s out of sync.

Your digestive system runs on a clock. Every 24 hours, waves of muscular contractions (called migrating motor complexes) sweep through the intestines like internal housekeeping.
When your brain’s master clock and your gut’s local clock are aligned, these waves fire rhythmically…you eat, you digest, you poop.

But when the timing drifts; from late-night meals, shift work, stress, or too much blue light… that rhythm unravels. Scientists call it “gut jet lag”.

The two-way clock system

Your brain’s central clock (in the suprachiasmatic nucleus) sets the body’s master rhythm based on light and dark.
Your gut has its own peripheral clock, synced mostly by when you eat.

In a healthy rhythm:

• Morning light hits your eyes → cortisol rises → bowel motility surges
  

• Your microbiome times its activity accordingly… producing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in waves that reinforce the cycle.
  

• Result: strong, regular, propulsive bowel movements.
  
  

When the rhythm breaks… irregular meals, midnight snacks, glowing screens… your microbiome stops keeping time with you.
The SCFA pulses flatten, gut propulsion weakens, the barrier leaks just enough to spark irritation, and motility slows.

Constipation becomes a timing disorder, not just a fiber shortage.

How to re-synchronize your gut clock

Here’s what the emerging research (from chronobiology and gastroenterology) suggests:

1. Anchor your meals to daylight: Front-load calories earlier in the day. Your colon’s most active period is mid-morning to early afternoon… not 10 pm.

2. Keep a consistent breakfast: Eating soon after waking… even something small with protein and fiber… jump-starts your gut’s daily rhythm.

3. Pair breakfast with a sub 10-minute toilet sit (not at the same time lol): It’s not weird…it’s training. Morning light + meal + bowel routine create consistent cues that retrain your enteric nervous system.

4. Cut screens two hours before bed: Blue light delays melatonin release, which delays everything downstream… including your gut motility.

5. Optimize your light exposure: Get bright light in the morning (outside ideally) and dim light at night. Light is medicine for your circadian system.

6. Consider “chrono-supplements” only after the routine stabilizes: certain prebiotics, or probiotics may reinforce rhythm… but only once sleep and eating patterns are consistent. Otherwise, they’re tuning a broken piano.

Studies show that when the microbiome loses rhythmicity, there’s:

• Reduced SCFA production (especially butyrate),
  

• Increased gut permeability,
  

• And low-grade inflammation that feeds back into sluggish motility.
  
  

Human data are early but promising: in shift-workers, timed eating and light therapy can partially restore bowel regularity without laxatives.

These are low-cost, high-return levers… they benefit metabolism, sleep, and immune balance too.

Your colon listens to light, food, and rhythm as much as to what’s on your plate.

Realign those cues and you may find your gut moves better… naturally.

P.S. If you’re curious about the role of diverse prebiotic fibres in supporting that daily microbial rhythm…I’ve been working on it for two years. The LOAM multi-fibre prebiotic blend launches in just two weeks.

Sign up to the waitlist for first access, deep-dive microbiome education, and exclusive giveaways for wait-list subscribers only here:

The Protein Problem No One Talks About

Everything seems to have “10 g of protein” on the label now.
Bagels, lattes, even cereal… even water!?

It looks impressive until you realise a lot of that “protein” isn’t doing much for your muscles.

Not all protein builds muscle

When you eat protein, your body breaks it into amino acids… the building blocks for muscle repair, hormones, enzymes, immune cells, everything.
But the catch is that you need all nine essential amino acids in the right balance to trigger muscle protein synthesis (the process of rebuilding muscle tissue).

Many “protein-fortified” foods use wheat protein… it’s cheap, shelf-stable, and technically bumps up the number on the label.
But wheat protein ALONE isn’t going to cut the mustard… and you need to complete this with a well balanced diet with protein coming from multiple sources.

The quality score that matters

Scientists use something called the PDCAAS… the Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score… to measure both the amino acid profile and how well it’s digested.

• Whey, eggs, and milk proteins score a perfect 1.0.
  

• Wheat protein is around 0.4–0.5.
  
  

The “protein-washed” food trend

Brands know “protein” sells. So we now get:

• Bagels marketed as post-gym recovery snacks.
  

• Coffee drinks with a scoop of cheap isolate.
  

• Granola that blasts “10 g PROTEIN!” in your face while relying on gluten or soy filler.
  

It’s not that these foods are bad… in fact they can be super handy and as part of a varied diet can still help make a complete amino acid profile… it’s that they create a false sense of progress. You think you’ve hit your protein goal, but metabolically, you’ve fallen short just relying on these alone.

What actually works

1. Prioritise a varied diet: eggs, dairy, fish, lean meats, soy, quinoa, and combinations like rice + beans or oats + Greek yoghurt.
   

2. Mix plant proteins: different plants complement each other’s amino acid gaps.
   

3. Look beyond the number: flip the label and check where the protein comes from; “wheat”, “vital wheat gluten”, or “hydrolysed vegetable protein”... remember these aren’t “bad” but it’s useful to start reading labels and understanding the source of protein.
   
   

So before you spend money on a “protein latte”, remember: quantity without quality is just marketing.

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Things I Wish I Knew Before My 30s…

Most people fear failure. I was in that boat too… but I was wrong.

What terrifies me far more is the idea of never attempting something worth failing at.

When you start anything big… a company, a mission, a movement… people warn you about risk. About how many start-ups collapse, how hard it is, how you’ll burn through savings or sanity. They make failure sound like a verdict.

But I’ve started to think of it as proof of life.

Because the alternative… never trying, never daring… is far worse.

Bruce Lee once said: “Don’t fear failure… not failure, but low aim is the crime.”
And I think about that a lot while building LOAM.

Every day, there’s an easier route I could take.
I could have launched a generic supplement, slapped on buzzwords, and called it done.
But instead, we spent two years building something rooted in real science.

It’s harder. It’s slower. It’s riskier.
But it’s honest.

If the goal is to challenge yourself and raise your gamer…. then it deserves my full swing, even if I miss.

The truth is that failure isn’t the opposite of success… it’s the soil it grows in.
Every collapsed experiment teaches you what doesn’t belong in the next version.
Every “no” refines your “why.”

You learn more from the prototypes that went wrong than from the ones that worked by luck and you find humility in the process, and pride in persistence.

Realistically I’ve lost time, money, sleep but never curiosity and that’s the difference between people who stop and people who build.

My biggest fear is regret… because it festers. Failure merely stings for a while.

You can recover from a failed launch, a bad hire, a missed opportunity but the thought “What if I’d just tried?”...that follows you forever (and I’ve got a few of those ghosts that follow me to this day)

So I’d rather fail loudly doing something that mattered than succeed quietly at something that didn’t.

👋 Who are you again? I’m Karan Rajan - a doctor and curious explorer of all things health and wellness. I host the Dr Karan Explores Podcast and have written two books "This Book May Save Your Life" and "This Is Vital Information" (you can pre-order it now!) and have just founded a microbiome company, LOAM Science  to create the best fiber product in the world!

Every Sunday, I share 3 interesting things about health, life and science to make your life easier, healthier and happier. (Disclaimer: I’m more your friend with health benefits. None of this is medical advice.) 

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