You may often wake up in
the middle of the night feeling hungry. Especially if you just came back late
and didn't have dinner.
If so, I want to go to
the kitchen to eat the leftovers.
But wait ...
As much as possible, you
should avoid eating too late. Not only makes it fat, the habit of eating too
late can also increase the risk of heart disease.
How can?
Eat too late to trigger heart disease
This surprising finding
comes from a study presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American
Heart Association.
Columbia University
Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons experts say that eating too late can
affect a person's risk of heart disease.
Nour Makarem and his team
studied about 12,700 adults aged 18-76 years to see their eating habits every
day. At the same time, experts also measured participants' blood pressure and
blood sugar.
Then, experts found that
more than half of participants experienced a 30 percent increase in daily
calories after eating above 6 pm.
Not only that, the
fasting blood sugar levels, insulin, and blood pressure of participants also
seemed higher when compared to men who had fewer calories.
Quoted from the Mayo
Clinic, high fasting blood sugar levels are one of the early signs of diabetes
(prediabetes). Fasting blood sugar itself is the amount of sugar in the blood
when a person does not eat at least 8 hours.
If examined further, as
many as 70 percent of people with prediabetes are very vulnerable to type 2
diabetes.
Well, this type 2
diabetes is one of the triggers for heart disease.
How come?
The human body works
based on the circadian rhythm, aka the body's biological clock. It is this
circadian rhythm that regulates when you sleep, wake up, eat, and various other
activities.
Circadian rhythms are
regulated by a group of nerve cells in the hypothalamus located in the
Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN) area. SCN, or what is also called the main clock,
is governed by many things. Starting from exposure to bright light, behavior,
and hungry signals.
For example, the main
clock in the brain is used to sending hungry signals at 6 pm. When you delay
eating time until 9pm, especially eating high-calorie foods, the main clock in
the brain is disrupted.
Supposedly, your body will automatically want to rest aka sleep at 9pm, but instead is forced to digest food. This makes the body's metabolism disturbed so that the fat content in the body increases.
The more fat in the body,
the more fat will eventually clog the bloodstream.
This condition can
trigger you to get chronic diseases, ranging from diabetes, hypertension, to
heart disease.
When is the safe dinner deadline?
From now on, you are not
recommended to eat too late to maintain a healthy body. You may also wonder, when
is dinner time safe for health?
Actually, there is no
specific benchmark when you have to eat and stop eating at night.
However, health experts
advise you to give a time lag between dinner and sleep for 2-3 hours.
This will give the body
time to digest the last meal you eat.
This was agreed upon by
Maureen Talbot, a senior nurse in the heart division at the British Heart
Foundation. He said that in addition to paying attention to the hours of
eating, you also have to pay attention to what you eat.
Choose foods that contain balanced nutrition such as fruit and vegetables. No less important, avoid fatty foods to prevent the risk of chronic diseases in the future.
If you don't have dinner,
but feel hungry in the middle of the night before going to bed, you should
choose foods that are easier to digest. For example, a piece of fruit or a
glass of milk is enough to prop up the stomach until the morning.
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