It is often accepted that eating early is good for your health. A news study shows that this would significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases – coronary heart pathologies and cerebrovascular pathologies such as cerebrovascular accidents (CVA).
Researchers from theNutritional epidemiology research team – EREN (Inserm, Inrae, Sorbonne-Paris-Nord University) – and the Institute of Global Health of Barcelona used data from 103,389 adults from the NutriNet-Santé cohort from 2009 to 2022 (79% women) to study the effects of meal times on the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Self-questionnaires provide information on what people consume and when they do it. “This allows us to define any food intake, not just breakfast”specifies Doctor Bernard Srour, researcher at EREN, who coordinated this study, published Thursday December 14 in Nature Communications.
While cardiac and cerebrovascular pathologies represent the leading cause of mortality in the world and half of the cases are linked to diet, this work concludes that eating late for the first time and the last time of the day is associated to an increased risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
Extend the duration of night fasting
More specifically, delaying breakfast time is associated with a 6% increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease every hour, the study indicates. Example: a person usually eating breakfast at 9 a.m. would have a 6% higher risk of having cardiovascular disease than a person eating it at 8 a.m. Delaying dinner by one hour is associated with an 8% increase in the risk of stroke each hour. However, there is no increased risk of coronary heart disease.
More generally, eating late, after 9 p.m., is associated with a 28% increase in the risk of developing a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or a stroke. compared to a dinner before 8 p.m. “Please note, this is not a variation of one hour, we compared all those who eat before 9 p.m. and those who eat after, which also includes people who eat after midnight “precise Bernard Srour.
Another result of the study, the more we extend the duration of the nighttime fast (time between the last meal of the day and breakfast the next day), the more the cardiovascular risk decreases. But be careful, warns the researcher, “our work suggests that this period must be coupled with a first food intake early in the morning”.
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