The same meal eaten at the wrong time of day can double your blood sugar level.
We have known for more than half a century that our glucose tolerance (our body’s ability to keep blood sugar under control)declines as the day progresses. As you can see in the graph below and at 0:25 of my video. How circadian rhythms affect blood sugar levelsif you hook If you have an IV placed and sugar water drips into your vein at a constant rate throughout the day, your blood sugar will begin to rise around 8:00 p.m., even though you haven’t eaten anything and the rate of infusion has not increased. change.
The same amount of sugar enters your system every minute, but your ability to handle it deteriorates at night before recovering in the morning. A meal Eaten at 8:00 pm can trigger twice the blood sugar response as an identical meal eaten at 8:00 am, as shown in the graph below and at 0:51 in my video. it’s as if you ate two times more. Your body just doesn’t expect you to eat when it’s dark outside. Our species can only have discovered how to use fire approximately a quarter of a million years ago. We just weren’t cut out for 24-hour dining.
One of the tests for diabetes is called a glucose tolerance test, and it measures how quickly our body can remove sugar from the bloodstream. You drink a cup of water with about four and a half tablespoons of regular corn syrup mixed in and then measure your blood sugar two hours later. At that time, your blood sugar should be below 140 mg/dL. Between 140 and 199 is considered a sign of prediabetes, and 200 and up is a sign of full-blown diabetes, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:37 in my video.
The circadian rhythm of glucose tolerance. is so powerful that a person can appear normal in the morning but prediabetic later in the day. Prediabetics who average 163 mg/dL at 7:00 am can result in frank diabetics with more than 200 mg/dL at 7:00 pm, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:53 in my video.
Choosing foods with a low glycemic index can help promote weight loss, but timing is key. Because of this circadian pattern in glucose tolerance, a low-glycemic food in the evening can cause a higher blood sugar spike than a high-glycemic food consumed in the morning, as you can see below and at minute 2:05 of my video.
We are so metabolically crippled in the evening, researchers found that eating a bowl of All Bran cereal at 8:00 p.m. caused a blood sugar spike as high as eating Rice Krispies at 8:00 a.m., as you can see in the graph below and at 2:23 in me video.
Foods with a high glycemic index at night seem represent The worst of both worlds. So if you are going to eat refined grains and sugary junk, might be less harmful in the morning, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:32 in my video.
Therefore, the drop in glucose tolerance throughout the day could help explain the weight loss benefits of anticipating calories at the beginning of the day. Even just taking Having lunch earlier or later can make a difference, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:48 in my video.
People random Those who ate a large lunch at 4:30 pm suffered a 46 percent greater blood sugar response compared to an identical meal eaten just hours earlier, at 1:00 pm. A meal at 7:00 am can cause 37 percent less blood sugar than an identical meal at 1:00 p.m., as you can see below, and at 3:04 in my video.
There is no now seem there be some difference between a meal at 8:00 pm and the same meal at midnight; Both seem to be too late, as you can see below, and at 3:15 in my video.
But, eating so late, at midnight or even 11:00 p.m., can disrupt your circadian rhythm so much that it can disrupt your metabolism the next morning, resulting in significantly higher blood sugar levels after breakfast, compared to eating the same dinner at 6:00 pm the night before, as shown in the graph below and at 3:32 in my video.
So these revelations from chronobiology bring the breakfast debate full circle. Skipping breakfast not only generally does not cause weight loss, but gets worse general daily blood sugar control in both diabetics and people who are not diabetic, as you can see in the graph below and at 3:44 in my video.
Below and at minute 3:53, you can see a graph that shows how those who skip breakfast have higher blood sugar levels even while sleeping 20 hours later. This may help explain why those who hop breakfast appear to have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the first place.
Those who skip breakfast also tend to have higher rates of heart disease, as well as having higher rates of atherosclerosis, in general. Is this simply because “skipping breakfast tends to be grouped with other unhealthy choices, including smoking” and with healthier eating habits in general? The link between skipping breakfast and heart disease (even premature death in general) appears survive Try to control for these confounding factors, but you don’t really know until you test it.
Does skipping breakfast cause, for example, an increase in cholesterol? Yes, researchers found a significant increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol in study participants randomly assigned to skip breakfast; they went up about 10 points in just two weeks, as you can see below and at 4:45 in my video.
The Israeli study with the calorie distribution of 700 calories for breakfast, 500 for lunch and 200 for dinner that I mentioned previously. found that the triglycerides of the king-prince-pauper group (those who ate more for breakfast than dinner) improved significantly (a drop of 60 points), while those of the pauper-prince-king group worsened significantly (an increase of 26 points) . So, consuming more calories in the morning compared to the evening may actually have a triple benefit: more weight loss, better blood sugar control, and lower risk of heart disease, as you can see below and in the minute 5:18 in me video.
If you’re skipping meals, whether you’re practicing intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating (where you try to fit all of your food intake into a set amount of time each day), it may be safer and more effective to skip dinner instead. breakfast.
I’m back with the next installment of the chronobiology series! I previously explored eating breakfast for weight loss (Is breakfast the most important meal to lose weight? and Is it better to skip breakfast to lose weight?), introduced chronobiology (How Circadian Rhythms Can Control Your Health and Weight), and looked at the science on eating more in the morning than at night (Eat more calories in the morning to lose weight, Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a beggarand Eat more calories in the morning than at night).
Below you will see How to synchronize your central circadian clock with your peripheral clocks.
The series will conclude in the coming weeks. Watch videos and blogs in related posts below.
Note: The Israeli 700/500/200 study I mentioned is detailed in the Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a beggar video if you want to know more. Also, consult the corresponding blog in related posts.
