People who skip breakfast or eat poorly to start the day are twice as likely to develop hardened arteries, which can lead to deadly heart disease, researchers said Monday.<\/p>\n
The study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology uncovered signs of damage to the arteries long before symptoms or disease developed. Researchers said their findings could offer an important tool in the fight against cardiovascular disease, the world\u2019s top killer, which took 17.7 million lives in 2015, according to the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who regularly skip breakfast likely have an overall unhealthy lifestyle,\u201d said study author Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis study provides evidence that this is one bad habit people can proactively change to reduce their risk for heart disease.\u201d The report was based on 4,000 middle-aged office workers in Spain. Participants were followed for six years.<\/p>\n
About one in four ate a high-energy breakfast, which included 20 % or more of the day\u2019s calories. Most people in the study – 70 % – ate a low-energy breakfast that gave them 5- 20 % of their daily calorie intake.<\/p>\n
Around 3 % said they skipped breakfast altogether or ate very little. This group \u201ctended to have more generally unhealthy eating habits and a higher prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors,\u201d said the report.<\/p>\n
People who skipped breakfast also \u201chad the greatest waist circumference, body mass index, blood pressure, blood lipids and fasting glucose levels,\u201d it said. Researchers used ultrasound technology to scan participants for signs of fatty deposits in the arteries, or early evidence of disease.<\/p>\n
They found that people who ate less than 5% of their recommended daily calories at breakfast had, on average, double the amount of fatty buildup in the arteries as people who ate a high-energy breakfast. This heightened risk of hardened arteries among people who skipped breakfast or ate little to start the day appeared independently of other factors, such as smoking, high cholesterol and physical inactivity.<\/p>\n
Previous studies have shown that eating a healthy breakfast is linked to good health, including a lower body weight, healthy diet, and lower risk of problems with cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes. Skipping breakfast has also previously been shown to raise the risk of coronary artery disease.<\/p>\n
According to Prakash Deedwania, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and author of an accompanying editorial in the journal, the study offers more evidence that skipping breakfast can be harmful to one\u2019s health. \u201cAlthough breakfast skippers are generally attempting to lose weight, they often end up eating more and unhealthy foods later in the day. Skipping breakfast can cause hormonal imbalances and alter circadian rhythms,\u201d said Deedwania. \u201cThat breakfast is the most important meal of the day has been proven right in light of this evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who skip breakfast or eat poorly to start the day are twice as likely to develop hardened arteries, which can lead to deadly heart disease, researchers said Monday. The study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology uncovered signs of damage to the arteries long before symptoms or disease developed. Researchers said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6631,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6629\/revisions\/6631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}