UPDATE: |This simple meal trick could lower heart health risks linked to night shift work News

Scientists may have found a way to combat the increased risk of heart attack and stroke caused by shift work

Night shift work is undoubtedly bad for your health. Shift work can wreak havoc with our body clocks, messing with our sleep, digestion, our hormones, and even our health.

The human brain and body has a circadian rhythm that operates on a 24-hour cycle. Research has shown that disrupting these biological clocks through irregular shift work could lead to a whole host of health problems.

Working night shifts has been linked to sleep disorders, fatigue, and increased risk of serious long-term diseases like cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

However, a new study has revealed that the timing of our meals could also have a serious impact on our health. The research found that only eating during the day, even when working nights, could help to lower the health risks associated with shift work.

Professor Frank Scheer, a professor of medicine and director of the Medical Chronobiology Programme at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said: “Our prior research has shown that circadian misalignment – the mistiming of our behavioural cycle relative to our internal body clock – increases cardiovascular risk factors.

“We wanted to understand what can be done to lower this risk, and our new research suggests food timing could be that target.”

In a small study of 20 healthy people, led by researchers from the University of Southampton and Mass General Brigham in the United States, the research team looked at the impact of meal timing on participants’ cardiovascular risk factors.

The participants spent two weeks in a controlled setting that simulated night shifts, eating either at night or during the day. They had no access to windows, watches, or electronics that would indicate the time.

All participants followed the same sleep schedule, but one team ate during the night ‘shift’ – like most shift workers do – and the other team only ate in the daytime.

The researchers then looked at how meal timings affected certain biological markers, such as a substance that increases the risk of blood clots and blood pressure, and found no negative effects on these risk factors in those who ate during the day – but cardiovascular risks did increase in those who ate during the day and night.

The researchers noted that there was no difference in how much and what the groups ate, only when they ate.

Study lead author Professor Sarah Chellappa, of the University of Southampton, added: “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.”

More research is needed in larger sample sizes to fully understand the effects of meal timing on heart health, but the researchers described the results as “promising”.

The researchers even suggested that avoiding or limiting eating during night hours may benefit night shift workers, people who suffer from insomnia or sleep disorders, people with variable sleep cycles, and those who often travel across time zones.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US and was published in the journal Nature Communications.