In a new study published at the Cancer, Epidemiology Biomakers and Prevention Journal, skipping meals at night may lower breast cancer and diabetes risk. Most individuals regard midnight snacks as a harmless treat, but researchers discovered that fasting at night is important for good health.
This research conducted by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine aimed to demonstrate that nocturnal eating is bad for the health and it should be avoided. This is the first study to show how nocturnal eating can harm health and how allowing the metabolism of the body to work in alignment with the natural sleep cycle can prevent diabetes and breast cancer.
"Increasing the duration of overnight fasting could be a novel strategy to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer," lead author Catherine Marinac, a doctoral student at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine told Telegraph.
The researchers enrolled 2,000 participants in the study. Diabetes.co.uk reports that the participants were asked to record their eating and sleeping patterns from 2009 to 2010. In the one-year study, findings show that there were 20% reduced risk to have high blood sugar which is one predisposing factor for diabetes and even breast cancer for every three hours of extra fasting at night.
Hence, the risk was even lowered when participants did not eat at all during the night after dinner and waits for breakfast to eat.
Marinac added, "This is a simple dietary change that we believe most women can understand and adopt. It may have a big impact on public health without requiring complicated counting of calories or nutrients."
However, Katie Goates, Senior Research Communications Officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Campaign said, "As the researchers did not assess the breast cancer risk of the women taking part in this study the claim that the length of time fasting overnight could affect a person's breast cancer risk is unfounded."