Whether you’re too busy, trying to lose weight or are just not genuinely hungry, there’s really no good reason to skip breakfast. In fact, new research has found that not eating breakfast may actually increase a person’s risk of contracting a disease.
“The study shows that, on the one hand, fasting reduces the number of circulating monocytes, which one might think is a good thing, as these cells are important components of inflammation. On the other hand, reintroduction of food creates a surge of monocytes flooding back to the blood, which can be problematic. Fasting, therefore regulates this pool in ways that are not always beneficial to the body’s capacity to respond to a challenge such as an infection,” explains Dr. Filip Swirski, Lead Author, Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai.
With that said, here are some diseases that you may be more prone to if you skip breakfast.
5. Diabetes
When women skipped the morning meal, they experienced insulin resistance, a condition in which a person requires more insulin to bring their blood sugar into a normal range, explained lead researcher Dr. Elizabeth Thomas, an instructor of medicine at the University of Colorado.
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This insulin resistance was short-term in the new study, but when the condition is chronic, it is a risk factor for diabetes. “Eating a healthy breakfast is probably beneficial,” Thomas said. “It may not only help you control your weight but avoid diabetes.”
The study included only women. Their average age was 29, and all were overweight or obese. Thomas measured their levels of insulin and blood sugar on two different days after the women ate lunch. On one day, they had eaten breakfast; on the other day, they had skipped it. The women’s insulin and glucose levels after lunch were much higher on the day they skipped breakfast than on the day they ate it. On the day they did not eat breakfast, Thomas explained, “they required a higher level of insulin to handle the same meal.”
Without the intake of nutrients from a healthy, well-balanced breakfast, it can also leave you tired, irritable, and unable to focus.
“Since you’re fasting all night while sleeping, your blood sugar is already naturally dipping [after waking],” says Caroline Young, RD, a registered dietitian and owner of Whole Self Nutrition. “If you don’t bring it back up by eating a well-balanced breakfast, your blood sugar will continue to drop throughout the morning. Over time, this can lead to large blood sugar swings and instability, which, of course, can lead to prediabetes or diabetes.
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There wasn’t any good news for men who skipped breakfast either.
4. Cancer
A study of 34,128 men and 49,282 women aged 40–79 years was conducted, to explore the association between lifestyle and cancer in Japan. Participants completed a baseline survey during 1988 to 1990 and were followed until the end of 2009. We classified participants into two groups according to dietary habits with respect to eating or skipping breakfast and carried out intergroup comparisons of lifestyle. Multivariate analysis was performed using the Cox proportional hazard regression model.
There were 5,768 deaths from cancer and 5,133 cases of death owing to circulatory diseases and 17,112 cases for all causes of mortality during the median 19.4 years follow-up. Skipping breakfast was related to unhealthy lifestyle habits. After adjusting for confounding factors, skipping breakfast significantly increased the risk of mortality from circulatory diseases
3. Heart Disease
Researchers analyzed food frequency questionnaire data and tracked health outcomes for 16 years (1992-2008) on 26,902 male health professionals ages 45-82. They found that men who reported they skipped breakfast had a nearly 30 percent higher risk of heart attack or death from coronary heart disease than those who reported they didn’t.
According to another study published in JAMA, men who skip breakfast have about 37% more chances of sustaining a heart attack when compared to those who eat breakfast. Dr. Leah Cahill, who led the research, tells that the rate of risk is not so worrisome. But she also supports the fact that indulging in a healthy breakfast could actually curb the risk of heart attacks.
2. Digestive Disorders and Heartburn
If you think that skipping meals would actually help with heartburn, you’d be wrong. When we skip meals our stomach continues to produce digestive juices and without any intake of food for a very long time it will cause an erosion of our stomach lining leading to stomach ulcers, gastritis, severe pain in the stomach, stomach acid and in more serious cases even cancer.
When we load ourselves with unhealthy calories after skipping meals we tend to prefer foods which are high in fat content to control our hunger and too much food causes an expansion of the muscle rings of our stomachs thereby raising the stomach acids to our throats which leads to heartburn. Surveys have shown that 74 percent of Americans are living with digestive disorders.
1. Obesity
Skipping breakfast when your body is conditioned to receiving calories in the morning can have a counterproductive effect on your metabolism. Studies suggest your body may adjust by slowing down its metabolic rate, potentially resulting in weight gain and obesity.
“Regular meals, including breakfast, play a role in maintaining a balanced metabolism,” Best explains. “Skipping breakfast may disrupt this balance, potentially affecting the body’s ability to use efficiently and store energy.”
So does this mean that you should stuff your face with pasta or donuts at 7 am? No, no, no! In fact, the diet consumed by the morning big-eaters, while effective for weight loss, leaves something to be desired. Certainly, it’s better balanced than the pastries-with-coffee option, which offers essentially no nutrients, no protein, and plenty of health-destroying bad fats and sugar. But the diet that led to weight loss contained no fruit or vegetables in the morning (although afternoon and evening meals had these elements), and also contained lots of dairy.
There are better ways to get a well-balanced morning slam without loading up on mucous-producing, allergy-inducing, immune-destroying, hormone-laden milk, cheese, nitrate-spiked breakfast meats, and buttered toast. Weight loss is important, but so is taking in foods that support your health. Diabetes is only one way to die.
The good news is that diabetes is often preventable, even once it has begun to take effect. Therefore, anyone who is overweight should begin exercising and eating a more nutritious, healthy balanced diet and exercising daily to shed excess pounds and remove two of the major diabetes risk factors right off the bat. And based on what can be taken away from the study, make sure to start each day with a healthy breakfast–that is a complete balanced meal that combines with the other meals that you eat during the day to provide 100% of your nutritional needs (protein, essential fatty acids, fiber, vitamins/minerals, phytochemicals, etc.). That means you want to consume approximately 33% of your requirements for everything at breakfast.
Where diseases such as diabetes are concerned, it is important to not be our own worst enemy. Other ways to reduce diabetes risk, according to the American Diabetes Association, are to control weight, blood pressure and cholesterol and to be physically active.
