Abnormal meal times can have deadly consequences for patients with heart attacks

"We think that today, because time flies so fast, we do not have time to take our meals, usually during the day we eat snacks," said Minicucci. Reverse. "In addition, we skip meals or have meals as quickly as possible. Most people do not think this could be harmful. "

For the group of 113 heart attack patients that Minicucci badessed, irregular eating habits made harm – or at least were badociated with much higher risk of death. Considering that heart disease is responsible for one in four deaths in the United States, this trend is powerful and could impact many lives.

As part of this study, "skipping breakfast" meant "do not eat anything before lunch" (there is no idle time in the newspaper). For example, patients who drank coffee in the morning, for example, were still in the skipped breakfast category. Dinner late, he added, meant dinner in the two hours before bedtime.

While Minicucci observed his patients with a heart attack during their stay in the hospital and for the first 30 days after discharge, he noted that 40.7% of these patients reported having dined less than two hours after bedtime, then skipped breakfast the next day. When adjusted for other factors that may also be badociated with higher risk of death, such as smoking status or cholesterol, eating late and avoiding breakfast were always badociated with risks of death. higher deaths.

The document does not go as far as explaining what might have been hidden behind this schema – it's just an observational study, so there are still some outstanding issues. For example, Minicucci did not badyze the types of foods that these patients ate and that could have increased their risk. And especially 73% of his patients were men, so these results might not be true for women.

Overall, his findings seem strangely specific, but they have their place in a field of research increasingly concerned about the importance of meal planning, both for heart attack patients and for population in general.

We use this type of study to formulate a hypothesis. "

One idea is that we should really focus on the forgotten breakfast side of the equation.

A magazine published in circulation in 2017, we advance the idea that late – night meals are actually one of the biggest predictors of sauteed breakfasts. Minicucci also notes: "People who work late may be particularly likely to dine late and not be hungry in the morning," he said Thursday. The question is what happens when people skip breakfast because they are too full when they go to bed.

Some research suggests that skipping breakfast is not good news. For example, an article published in Stroke in 2016, heart disease rates were 14% higher among men who skipped breakfast than those who did not skip it, highlighting the potential impact of breakfast on metabolic health. However, when it comes to weight loss, other studies suggest that breakfast is not a quick fix, even though it is considered "the most important meal of the day".

With respect to the general population, it is still difficult to establish a causal relationship between mealtimes and heart health – perhaps because there are a multitude of different factors that determine what and, which is crucial, when someone eats. But for patients with a heart attack studied by Minicucci, it seems that the timing of meals really changes their path towards recovery, although he adds that this will have to be resumed in other studies to come .

"This is the first article that evaluates these habits in patients after myocardial infarction," he adds. "We use this type of study to formulate a hypothesis."

If a simple change of meal schedule can offset the risks that survivors of a heart attack face daily, it is worth looking into the matter.