Early dinner lowers risk of cancer, finds new Study

A modern lifestyle involving mistimed eating and sleeping patterns are known to be associated with adverse health effects. Now, a new study published in the International Journal of Cancer has found that adhering to a timely eating pattern, specifically to an early dinner (before 9 pm) and a long interval between your last meal and sleep are associated with lower risk of prostate and breast cancer.

Manolis Kogevinas, ISGlobal, Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues conducted the study to assess assessed whether meal timings are associated with the risk of prostate and breast cancer while considering lifestyle and chronotype.

Modern life involving mistimed and erratic eating patterns such as eating late at night are associated with adverse health effects in experimental studies. However, there is a little evidence in humans about the negative impact of eating patterns on health.

For the study, the researchers analyzed 1205 cases of breast cancer and 621 cases of prostate and compared them with 1321 female and 872 male population controls. The participants were interviews on the timing of meals and sleep, and they completed a Food Frequency Questionnaire.

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Key Findings:

• Compared with the individuals sleeping immediately after supper, those sleeping 2 or more hours after supper had a 20% reduction in cancer risk for breast and prostate cancer combined and in each cancer individually.


• A similar protection was observed in individuals having supper before 9 pm compared with supper after 10 pm.

"In this study, we found that meal timing was associated with prostate and breast cancer risk and specifically that adherence to diurnal eating patterns and particularly early suppers and a longer supper‐sleep time interval were associated with a lower cancer risk. This is, to our knowledge, the first epidemiological study showing the long-term health effects associated with mistimed eating patterns," the authors write.

Findings of the study, stress on the importance of evaluating the body's circadian rhythms in studies on cancer and diet. The authors further emphasize the need to develop dietary recommendations for the prevention of cancer that focus on quantity and type of food intake.

The findings stress the importance of evaluating the body's internal clock--or circadian rhythms--in studies on diet and cancer, and the need to develop dietary recommendations for cancer prevention that focus not only on type and quantity of food intake.

For more information follow the link: https://doi.org/10.1002/ijc.31649