Daytime eating may benefit mental health

Published on September 12, 2022

Imagine you’re a lab rat and scientists are studying how eating during different times of the day affects your mood. They simulate night work and divide rats into two groups: one group gets to eat during the day and night, and the other group only during the day. The rats in the first group experience a 26% increase in depression-like mood levels and a 16% increase in anxiety-like mood levels. However, the rats in the second group don’t show these increases. This suggests that when we eat can have an impact on our mental health. It’s like deciding when to paint your bedroom walls; if you do it during the day, the colors might be vibrant and happy, but if you do it at night, they might turn out gloomy and somber. If we apply this finding to humans, it’s possible that meal timing could play a role in reducing mental health issues by ensuring we eat during the daytime. To learn more about this interesting study, check out the research!

Investigators have designed a study that simulated night work and then tested the effects of daytime and nighttime eating versus daytime eating only. The team found that, among participants in the daytime and nighttime eating group, depression-like mood levels increased by 26 percent and anxiety-like mood levels by 16 percent. Participants in the daytime-only eating group did not experience this increase, suggesting that meal timing may influence mood vulnerability.

Read Full Article (External Site)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>