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Skipping Breakfast May Be Linked To Poor Heart Health, Study Says (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the whole-and-hearty dept.

A new study says that skipping breakfast could be linked to poorer cardiovascular health. The findings reveal that, compared with those who wolfed down an energy-dense breakfast, those who missed the meal had a greater extent of the early stages of atherosclerosis -- a buildup of fatty material inside the arteries. The Guardian reports: The research is part of a larger study that will follow the participants over a decade or more to see how disease in the arteries progresses. Published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the research looked at the health and diets of 4,052 middle-aged bank workers, both men and women, with no previous history of cardiovascular disease. At the start of the study, which is partly funded by the Spanish bank Santander, participants completed a detailed questionnaire into what they had eaten and when over the previous 15 days. Body mass index, cholesterol levels and other measures were collected, together with data including the participants' smoking status, educational attainment and level of physical activity. Imaging techniques were used to track the extent of the early, sub-clinical stages of atherosclerosis in six arteries, including those around the heart, thighs and neck. The results reveal that, compared to those tucking into more than 20% of their daily calories at breakfast, those who consumed next to nothing for breakfast had a greater extent of atherosclerosis.

25 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Question by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    What if my preferred breakfast is glazed donuts?

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    1. Re:Question by ls671 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Anyway, I almost pass out sometimes around 5 PM when I forget to eat breakfast. Since I will be 82 in a few weeks, it is understandable although. I am sorry, I guess that what I am trying to say is that maybe I should have eaten you for breakfast when that happens. Better than nothing I guess...

      I am truly sorry again dear glazed donut,

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    2. Re:Question by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know what else isn't available in nature? Cooking. Oh, and in the northern regions, forget about citrus fruits, so enjoy your scurvy from time to time.

      Just because something is "unnatural" doesn't mean it's bad. It does instinctively make sense to say "hey, our ancestors didn't have X, they evolved without X, so we don't need X to survive". The fallacy here is that our ancestors only needed to survive until they could procreate to keep the species going. So dying with 30-35 is perfectly fine. You'd procreate before (at about 14-16 years of age, maybe have 2-3 more kids and die when they in turn reach the ripe age of 14-16), so the species is fine.

      You probably ain't, but who gives a shit? It's natural!

      So please can the "it's unnatural" argument. It's bollocks.

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    3. Re:Question by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh, and in the northern regions, forget about citrus fruits, so enjoy your scurvy from time to time.

      There's plenty of vitamin C in other things, including raw meat.

      So dying with 30-35 is perfectly fine

      Not at all. It's very beneficial for a tribe to have elders with experience.

    4. Re:Question by Kohath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What if it is? There's nothing particularly bad about eating a glazed donut a few times a week. Diet related health problems are related to the total of all foods eaten over long periods of time (in combination with other lifestyle factors), not specific food items.

    5. Re:Question by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Neither of what you stated invalidates the GP's core argument, that just because something isn't "natural" doesn't mean it's not good for you.

      You know what else we consumed in pre-historic times? Older meat. We weren't above scavenging, at least not until someone correlated it with death and disease.

      Cooking solves a world of problems. The pre-historic argument which was being replied to was an incredible load of shit. Yeah they didn't get cancer. We wouldn't either if we lived such short lives. Kids crank out offspring as soon as they biologically could, and the 30 year olds WERE the tribal elders back then.

    6. Re:Question by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      >Meat contains proteins, fat, salt and no vitamins.

      Are you lying or are you genuinely that misinformed?

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    7. Re:Question by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      Cooking wasn't invented in the last century FFS.

      You're right. Cooking was invented in 2002 by Rachael Ray.

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  2. Correlation ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People who take the time to breakfast probably also hit the sack earlier and get more sleep.

    1. Re:Correlation ... by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People who have the time to breakfast also probably suffer from less stress and generally have more time to prepare healthy meals instead of stuffing their face with whatever is available to rip open and stir into hot water.

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    2. Re:Correlation ... by Bongo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Anyone interested can check the blog of Dr Malcom Kendrick. He's been rabbitting on for about 30 episodes now on all the factors involved, and how the conventional view -- a view which is starting to be rejected by the mainstream, but the man in the street is yet to hear about it -- the conventional view became dogma but doesn't make sense. The lipid hypothesis is dead. The notion that fat clogs up the arteries like a drain clogged with lard, is dead. His very latest blog discusses the mechanical fluid forces inside the arteries, and in combination with what, might be a cause (the damage is usually seen only where these forces are greatest in the vessels, so always the same places, end so on). One thing reading his blogs is that he makes it abundantly clear that it is not a simple problem. But medicine kinda fell into a dogma about it. Anyway, yeah, the people not having breakfast, why is that? Maybe they are not going to be early, getting up early, and having time to eat breakfast. Maybe they are stressing themselves and not getting sleep. And a lot of repair happens during sleep. And Kendrick also talks about how the internal scabs in the arteries would be broken down gradually in a healthy person, but in some people this doesn't happen, so they eventually get too big and break off and cause a stroke, It is fascinating stuff. A quite entertaining blog is nothing else.

    3. Re:Correlation ... by Bongo · · Score: 3, Informative

      The current president of the world heart federation came out and agreed with nina teicholz's book which exposed the hypothesis was based on fraud. The president of the world heart federation himself said it was based on flawed biased science. It's on youtube even.

  3. Intermittent fasting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hmm... this is interesting.

    >Participants who skipped breakfast had the greatest waist circumference, body mass index, blood pressure, blood lipids and fasting glucose levels.

    I skip breakfast (i'm on 12/12 intermittent fasting schedule) and I'm fit, healthy BMI, no high blood pressure. Dunno about glucose, but I'm also on low carb diet, so it should never really skyrocket.

    >Participants who skipped breakfast were more likely to have an overall unhealthy lifestyle, including poor overall diet, frequent alcohol consumption and smoking. They were also more likely to be hypertensive and overweight or obese.

    I think this pretty much excludes all of us who intentionally fast. i believe more research is required, it could be that fasting + high carb diet ("normal" western diet) is really bad (which would make sense due to sugar spikes), not intermittent fasting itself!

    1. Re: Intermittent fasting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I did intermittent fasting and I went hyperglycemic. According to my doctor, the fasting caused my liver to convert a lot of fat into sugar, I lost 25kg in 3 years, which caused me to become diabetic. Now I need to take meds that will cause my liver to produce more insuline, meaning that it will try to get me fat again, I have to fight hard to loose weight, in fact I've given up on loosing weight by eating less and instead I am working on increasing muscle mass instead.

      I will say this: It seems you should be looking for a new doctor.

      1- Hyperglycemia is not something that would have been caused by intermittent fasting unless you were a type 1 diabetic to begin with.
      2- Your doctor said that fasting caused your body to convert fat into sugar, which is not what happens, the large amount of calories during a fast come from fatty acids which are converted into ketones. Ketones have caloric energy which is on the order of 28 times that of carbohydrates. Granted stored triglycerides within the body have a glycerol backbone which can be metabolized into a limited amount of glucose, but that is not what your body is "running off of" if that happens, much more calories will be coming from fatty acid metabolism. A simple way for your doctor to have determined this would have been with a fasting test of your ketones.
      3- You said you have to take meds to make your liver produce insulin? Did your doctor tell you that? Insulin is produced in the pancreas by beta cells. The liver converts glucose into a storage form called Glucagon, and can convert it back into glucose upon demand among many other things. Insulin comes from the pancreas though, not from the liver. Your liver is not going to "Try to make you fat" it is simply processing what you give it to process into fuel and waste products.

      4- Lots of people feel they have to fight hard to lose weight, While this may take a lot of effort, the main thing is keeping your insulin level as low as possible so that the exercise you are able to do is fueled by stored body fat in a slight (usually about 10%) caloric deficit. Trying to go faster than losing a pound or two per week will throw you into a mode that will cause blood sugar fluctuations in the short term but in the long term if you don't overdo it you will lose weight from body fat. (provided you don't have type 1 diabetes and need to inject insulin which is a problem whose cause is unrelated to what you have eaten in general, we don't really know if there are food or toxins or infections that cause type 1 diabetes in susceptible people , finding a combination of things like that is statistically difficult and probably is a dead end in terms of research.)

      I would say you should find another doctor because your doctor does not seem to understand how the body works.

  4. stupid studies by mocm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who remembers what they have eaten the last 15 days? How many of the answers were incorrect, either because the people forgot or lied for
    whatever reason. These medical studies are just usefull enough to find trends that have to be backed up by real research into cause and effect.
    To even publish such early results is irresponsible and might even bias other research by leading them into a wrong direction.

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    1. Re:stupid studies by mentil · · Score: 2

      I might not be able to remember everything I ate yesterday, but I could remember if I skipped breakfast.

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    2. Re:stupid studies by speedplane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And here's a study just last year saying breakfast doesn't matter. This is typical. Decades of nutritional studies have often turned out useless and in many cases harmful. Hard to trust anything now. Gotta just trust your gut.

      That's a pun, but it's often true. Pay close attention to how your body reacts to what you put into it. It's the best feedback mechanism we have.

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    3. Re:stupid studies by Cederic · · Score: 4, Funny

      Gotta just trust your gut.

      Having seen the remains of what my gut does to breakfast I'm not sure I want to trust it.

  5. correlation ... causation ... blah blah blah by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    Always the same story. Correlation does not equal causation, especially not in extremely complex environments such as diets.

    Better research would be to tell people to start skipping breakfast, or -- if they already skip it -- to start eating one, and see what happens to these people.

    1. Re:correlation ... causation ... blah blah blah by speedplane · · Score: 2

      Always the same story. Correlation does not equal causation, ...

      True, but in nutritional studies, correlation/causation is just one of the many problems. They are often based on inaccurate surveys, are in uncontrolled environments, and use unrepresentative populations.

      There's a good Malcom Gladwell podcast all about nutritional study experimentation. So many of these studies are horrible. There are exceptions though. Facilities where everything can be controlled can often make for decent nutritional studies (e.g., prisons, mental health facilities). These are few and far between for the obvious reasons.

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  6. many possible explonations by Dorianny · · Score: 2

    People generally skip breakfast because they can't make time for it. If you would rather skip breakfast then wake up a half hour earlier then it is likely that you aren't getting a full nights rest and chronic lack a sleep has long been long been associated with poor health

  7. I could never skip breakfast by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

    Without my morning Red Bull and the two aspirin I'm simply not functional.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Re:Correlation is not causation by Smidge204 · · Score: 2

    Correlation does not imply causation, except when it does;

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    =Smidge=

  9. High Carb = Western by sacremon · · Score: 2

    BTW, a recent article in The Lancet looked at 135,335 individuals from 18 countries over a median time of 7.4 years and they found that a diet high in carbs (as a percentage of total calories) was far more typical in Asia than in the West.

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  10. Brought to you by ... by PPH · · Score: 2

    ... Denny's.

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