Eating late may mean higher heart disease risk for women.
Nov. 11 — Late dinners and heavy evening snacking do no favors for women’s hearts, a new study suggests.
Researchers at New York City’s Columbia University found that those who ate more of their daily calories in the evening had a higher risk of heart disease.
One cardiologist who looked over the new findings wasn’t surprised by the effect.
“The way metabolism, circadian rhythm, cortisol/insulin cycles work, they do not and cannot support heavy meals in the evening hours,” said Dr. Evelina Grayver.
“Not only are our bodies not meant to digest at late hours, we are also less mobile at night, thus the calories we consume are not being expended as energy,” said Grayver, who directs the coronary care unit at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.
The new study involved 112 women, average age 33, whose heart health was assessed at the start of the study and then again one year later. The women recorded what they ate for one week at the start of the study and for one week 12 months later.
Most of the women ate some food after 6 p.m., but those who consumed a higher proportion of their daily calories in the evening tended to have had poorer heart health, say a team led by Nour Makarem, a Columbia associate research scientist.