Eating late in the evening increases the risk of heart disease—at least
if you’re a woman.
The risk starts to
rise if we eat most of our daily calorie intake after 6pm, and the risk
continues to rise the later we eat.
It’s an unrecognised
factor in healthy eating when the emphasis has always been on what and how much
we eat, say researchers from the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at New
York’s Columbia University.
There was a decline in
heart health for each one percent of total daily calorie intake that was
consumed after 6pm, the researchers discovered when they tracked the eating
habits of 112 women with an average age of 33.
Although most of the
volunteers ate some food after 6pm, those who consumed most of their daily
calorie intake after that time had poorer heart health, the researchers
discovered.
They had higher blood
pressure, a higher body-mass index (BMI) and had poorer control of blood sugar
levels, all early-warning signals of diabetes; raised blood pressure was a
particular problem among the Hispanic women they tested.
The researchers don’t
know if they would see similar problems among men.
Eating less in the
evening is one simple way to reduce heart disease risk, the researchers say.