Can Eating Late At Night Lead To Obesity? Expert Weighs In

Eating Late At Night And Obesity: Obesity is one of the most common conditions that millions of people across the world experience. Being overweight or obese is a health condition when an individual has too much body mass. Obesity is linked to several chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, heart diseases, digestion problems and many others. Therefore, it is important to manage a healthy weight in order to protect your body from chronic illnesses. Our eating patterns have a huge impact on our weight management, the foods we eat, the time at which we consume foods and things we do before and after meals.

In a conversation with Jagran English, Dr Nirdesh Chauhan, Associate Consultant, Gastroenterology, Fortis Escorts Hospital, Faridabad explained how eating late at night can lead to obesity.

Watch the video below about how obesity leads to heart diseases: 

Can Eating Late At Night Lead To Obesity? 

According to Dr Chauhan, in Indian culture, it is a long popular advice to avoid late-night food as it increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, and other gastrointestinal problems. In recent times, few studies have been carried out to investigate precisely why late-night eating is linked to greater body weight.

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According to one US-based study, eating 4 hours later than normal actually changed many of the physiological and molecular mechanisms that favour weight gain. To understand this, three hypotheses were given which are associated with weight gain.

Can Eating Late At Night Lead To Obesity (Image Credits: Canva)

• By influencing appetite: Increase in hunger due to shift in hunger regulating hormones such as decrease in leptin (feeling of fullness) and increase in ghrelin (feeling hungry)
• By decreasing energy expenditure: By decreasing burned calories and decreasing core body temperature
• By molecular changes in fat tissues: Favouring fat deposition

Dr Chauhan said that all these results together indicate that late-night eating leads to several changes that could lead to weight gain. Many other studies that were done to look for the relationship between disturbances in meal timing on energy balance (such as skipping breakfast, late-night eating, and shift work) were linked to higher body weight and greater risk of metabolic disorders (hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, obesity). So, people who are looking for weight control should ditch late-night snacks and favour eating most of their meals earlier in the day.

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(Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis or treatment.)