We all get tempted to eat late especially if we just ended a long and tiring day at work. However, there's a reason why most doctors discourage us from doing this. This also means that those aiming for a healthier diet need to stop snacking late at night.
Experts recently discovered the risks people might experience as they continue their bad habit of eating late. The study suggests that eating later in the day can significantly impact a person's biological weight regulation.
In this article, you'll read:
- Risks You Should Know if Eat Late
- Adverse Effect of Eating Late at Night
Having healthy eating habits is essential for your health, may it be your physical, emotional, and mental health. Studies found that adults who eat a healthy diet may have a higher possibility of living longer.
Additionally, developing healthy eating habits allows people to have a lower risk of having different illnesses. It includes different types of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and much more.
In contrast, tolerating unhealthy eating habits may pose risks to your health. Eating late is one of many unhealthy habits that every individual must avoid to avoid serious health risks.
Risks You Should Know if Eat Late
In a recent study, experts found that eating later in the day can significantly affect a person's biological weight regulation in three key ways. It can be through the number of calories a person burns, the hunger levels, and how a body stores fat.
The Link Between Obesity and Late Eating
At present, obesity is affecting hundreds of millions of people from different parts of the world. In relation to this, experts emphasize how people can avoid the risk of becoming obese in a simple way. It is through avoiding eating late or choosing to eat meals a few hours earlier.
Prior to the recent studies, there were already a number of studies proving the link between the timing of meals and weight gain. However, experts wanted to dig deeper into it and tease out the biological reasons behind it.
Meanwhile, Frank Scheer is a neuroscientist from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He formed a team to look at the health risks of those who eat late.
To get results, they focused on the link between eating late and gaining weight. With this, they can determine the possible rise of obesity risks for those who eat late at night.
Together with his team, Frank Scheer decided to expand their knowledge and acquire information about it. This all roots in all past studies relating the risk of obesity to a bad habit of eating late.
Additionally, they based their study on previous research connecting those who eat late to obesity. However, they wanted to focus on understanding how that link came to be.
In the process of doing this study, 16 people decided to participate. All of their BMI or body mass indexes indicated that they belonged to the overweight and obese range.
Each of them volunteered to be part of the study. All of them individually underwent two different experiments over the course of six days.
During that period, experts ensured that the participants' sleeping and eating were tightly controlled beforehand. They conducted different tests for their study over the course of several weeks.
Results of the Tests Conducted
Experts were able to make a number of observations through blood samples, survey questions, and other measurements. To accomplish this, they monitored calorie intake, physical activity, light exposure, and sleep duration.
They also considered underlying factors that cause people to eat late. Meanwhile, some results differ due to certain sleep cycles or times these people are awake.
When people eat late, they are more likely to:
- Feel hungrier. The tendency for a person to feel hungrier when eating late increases. It is because the hormone leptin level becomes lower over 24 hours. Note that the hormone leptin tells us when we are full.
- Burn calories at a slower rate. Adipose tissue gene expression affects how the body stores fat. Concerning this, the increase in the adipogenesis process builds fat tissues and decreases the lipolysis process that breaks fat down.
The also shows how eating earlier in the day can positively affect an individual. It could impact three critical drivers of how our bodies balance energy and the subsequent obesity risk.
Adverse Effect of Eating Late at Night
Eating late at night is common for people nowadays. Aside from the risk mentioned above, here are some negative effects of eating late at night:
- Eating Disorders. Failure to have a healthy diet, eating habits, and routine may lead to eating disorders.
- Affect Sleep Schedule. A stomach rumbling at night, which is asking for more food, is most likely to interrupt the sleeping cycle.
- Affect Metabolism and Digestion. The human body's metabolism is low at night because the body is not active during this moment. Eating late at night may result in making metabolic state lower. As a result, the body cannot quickly digest the food you take.
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