By eating only in the daytime, researchers believe that shift workers can avoid some of the health risks associated with nocturnal work. — dpa
Eating only during the daytime could help protect shift workers from risks to their heart health, according to a new study by researchers in Britain and the United States.
Scientists from the University of Southampton in Britain and Mass General Brigham in the US say that previous research had shown that working night shifts can lead to “serious” cardiovascular (heart) health risks.
They say that their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, provides evidence that by eating only in the daytime, shift workers can avoid some of the risks.
The team worked with 20 healthy and young participants during a two-week period during which they had no access to windows or watches to study the effect of circadian misalignment on their body functions.
For the study, the participants stayed awake for 32 hours in a dimly-lit environment, maintaining constant body posture and eating identical snacks every hour.
After participating in simulated night work, they were assigned to either eating during the nighttime, as most night workers do, or only during the daytime.
The researchers then examined the after-effects of the food timing on participants’ cardiovascular risk factors, including autonomic nervous system markers, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (which increases the risk of blood clots) and blood pressure.
They found that these risk factors were unaffected for those who eat during the daytime.
“Our prior research has shown that circadian misalignment – the mistiming of our behavioural cycle relative to our internal body clock – increases cardiovascular risk factors,” said Brigham and Women’s Hospital Medical Chronobiology Programme director and professor of medicine Dr Frank Scheer.
“We wanted to understand what can be done to lower this risk, and our new research suggests food timing could be that target.”
Study lead author and University of Southampton associate professor Dr Sarah Chellappa said: “Our study controlled for every factor that you could imagine that could affect the results, so we can say that it’s the food timing effect that is driving these changes in the cardiovascular risk factors.” – PA Media/dpa
