health blog 12

In a recent study published online in  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition  (AJCN) on September 6, 2017, BWH investigators examined the relationships between body fat and body mass index, and the timing of food consumption, to time of day and to the body's circadian or body clock. This is the first time that the timing of meals has been studied in real world settings, in relation to melatonin onset, which marks the onset of sleep. "We found that the timing of food intake relative to melatonin onset, a marker of a person's biological night, is associated with higher percent body fat and BMI, and not associated with the time of day, amount or composition of food intake," stated lead author Andrew W. McHill, PhD, researcher with the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at BWH. "These findings suggest that the timing of when you consume calories, relative to your own biological timing may be more important for health than the actual time of day....

The findings put a new spin on weight management priorities for women in this this age-group, who are prone to abdominal weight gain, said study investigator Line Mærsk Staunstrup, MSc, a PhD student with Nordic Bioscience and ProScion, in Herlev, Denmark. "When assessing cancer risk, body mass index (BMI) and fat percentage may not be adequate measures as they fail to assess the distribution of fat mass," she explained. "Avoiding central obesity may confer the best protection." The findings come from the Prospective Epidemiologic Risk Factor study, an observational, prospective cohort study designed to get a better understanding of age-related diseases in Danish postmenopausal women. It included 5,855 women (mean age 71 years) who underwent baseline dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans to assess body fat and body fat composition and have been followed for 12 years. Using information from national cancer registries, the study recorded 811 solid ca...