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 woman’s risk of contracting a disease.
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.
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.
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