heart friendly

New Delhi, July 22: Men who regularly skip breakfast have an increased risk of developing coronary heart disease (CHD) or suffering a heart attack, according to a new study that has expanded the set of health risks associated with missing breakfast.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have found that men who skipped breakfast had a 27 per cent higher risk of heart attack or CHD than men who ate breakfast regularly.

Their study, described as the first to investigate the link between breakfast and CHD, has also found an increased risk of CHD among men who regularly eat late at night. The findings will be published tomorrow in the medical journal Circulation.

“The take-home message from our study is — don’t skip breakfast, eat in the morning, preferably within two hours of waking up,” Leah Cahill, a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of nutrition at the HSPH told The Telegraph.

Cahill and her colleagues assessed the eating habits of 26,902 American men between 45 and 82 years of age without any history of heart disease over 16 years — from 1992 through 2008 — and found 1,527 men had developed CHD. When the researchers adjusted the data to take into account age, men who did not eat breakfast showed a 33 per cent higher risk of CHD compared with men who did.

Earlier independent studies have shown that skipping breakfast can cause men to gain substantial weight and develop diabetes and is associated with adverse changes in blood pressure, insulin and blood cholesterol levels.

“As we sleep on all night we are fasting, so if we regularly do not break that fast (early) in the morning, it puts a strain on our bodies that can lead to insulin resistance, hypercholesterolemia and blood pressure, which can then lead to CHD,” Cahill said.

A cardiologist in India, who was not associated with the Harvard study, said the strength of the new study lies in its large numbers and the long period of follow-up.

“The study provides insights into the effects of abnormal eating patterns such as skipping breakfast and late night eating in causing CHD,” said Dorairajan Prabhakaran, the executive director of the Centre for Chronic Disease Control in New Delhi.

The HSPH study also found that men who reported eating very late at night had a 55 per cent higher risk of CHD. But Cahill and her colleagues say so few men in the study did this that this does not appear to be a significant public health problem.

The researchers said while eating habits could be a proxy indicator of other behaviour which influences the risk of CHD, the link between skipping breakfast and CHD remained even after they accounted for differences in multiple lifestyle factors.

“But it’s important to note that these were relatively well-off individuals who were relatively less obese than the US population, had low smoking rates, and were moderate drinkers,” Prabhakaran said.

The HSPH researchers said while their findings are significant, they would need to be validated through more studies covering women and other populations.

“If replicated in women and other ethno-cultural groups,” the researchers wrote in the journal, “the findings from the present study provide evidence to support a recommendation of daily breakfast eating... by health authorities to prevent CHD.”