Women worried about heart disease should eat dinner before 6pm, a new study has concluded.
That's because if we eat too late, we are fighting our biological clock and our body struggles to metabolise the food, researchers from Columbia University said.
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The researchers asked 112 women to keep an electronic food diary and to report how much food they ate and when for one week at the beginning of the study and then again for another week one year later.
They found that the women's risk of heart disease rose if they consumed more calories after 6pm.
"We evolved to adopt a 24-hour light and dark cycle, meaning we eat and are active during the day and we sleep at night," the study's lead author, Dr Nour Makarem, told NBC's Today show.
"But our more demanding work schedules and commutes push everything later and now we are eating at unconventional times."
In order to track the participants' health, researchers used the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7, an interactive online tool that assesses people's heart health information and gives them a score.
Participants - who had an average age of 33 - then assessed their score a year after beginning the study.
The study found that every one percent increase in calories consumed after 6pm was associated with a worse Life's Simple 7 score.
That manifested in a higher body mass index (BMI), higher blood pressure and higher long-term blood sugar levels.
Researchers found a similar result with every one percent increase after 8pm.
Dr Makarem told Today a take away from the study was that "a relatively simple and modifiable behaviour can lower the risk of developing heart disease".
Although the study looked only at women, past studies have found similar results also apply to men, according to the Daily Mail.
According to the Heart Foundation NZ, heart disease is the leading cause of death of New Zealanders. It affects 180,000 Kiwis or one in 20 adults.
Newshub.
