Breakfast is not just a meal. Timing of administration
may be a vital indicator of the risk of early death
Recent scientific
research has revealed a shocking result indicating that every hour of delay in eating breakfast is associated with a 6% increased risk of death in people over sixty.
These findings
reached by researchers from Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital
open new horizons for understanding how eating patterns
can be a window into an individual's overall health.
Breakfast timing
can be an easy-to-monitor marker of individuals' overall health," said Dr. Hassan Dashti, a nutritionist and chronobiologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study.
He noted that shifts in meal times could be used as an "early warning" to
investigate underlying physical and psychological health problems.
Dr Dashti analyzed data from about 3,000 adults in the United Kingdom, with an average age of 64 years, from a study affiliated with the University of Manchester.
Participants reported their meal times and completed health
and lifestyle questionnaires over many years.
The researchers found that
as people age, they tend to delay breakfast and dinner, and that those with more health problems or a genetic predisposition to staying up late also tend to eat later.
Eating late breakfast has been linked to physical and psychological illnesses
including fatigue, oral health problems, depression, and anxiety.
It was also
associated with a slightly higher chance of death over a ten-year follow-up period.
After adjusting
for other factors such as age, gender, educational level and lifestyle, every hour of delay in eating breakfast was associated with a 6% increased risk of death.
However
the study authors assert that there is no direct cause
or effect between eating late breakfast and death
only an association.
This means that eating breakfast late may not directly shorten life, but it may indicate underlying health problems, lifestyles, or biological differences that
affect health, information that can be useful to your GP.
Until now
our view has been limited on how meal timing evolves later in life and how these shifts relate to overall health and longevity," Dashti said. Our findings help bridge this gap by showing that late meal timing, especially delayed breakfast
is associated
with health challenges and an increased risk of death in older adults.
These findings add new meaning to the saying that
'breakfast
is the most important meal of the day', especially for older individuals.