A new study has suggested that limiting food intake to daylight hours could lower cardiovascular risks for shift workers.
Researchers at the University of Southampton and Mass General Brigham have found that eating only during the day may help those working night shifts avoid certain health risks. Prior research has indicated that night shifts can lead to significant cardiovascular problems.
The study, published in Nature Communications, involved 20 healthy, young participants over a two-week period. The participants were kept away from windows and watches to examine how circadian misalignment affected their body functions.
The participants stayed awake for 32 hours in a dimly lit environment, maintaining constant posture and consuming identical snacks hourly. Following this simulated night work, they were assigned to either eating during the nighttime, mimicking typical night workers, 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.
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.”
Dr Sarah Chellappa, an associate professor at the University of Southampton, and lead author, 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.”
