Eating During Sunlight Hours Minimizes Mood Vulnerabilities

Shift workers like those who work at night experience circadian misalignment and mood vulnerabilities. This can be avoided by eating during the day when there is sunlight

Highlights:

Daytime eating reduces the risk of mood instability
The timing of meals is a crucial component of nutrition that has an impact on mental health
People experiencing circadian misalignment may have less mood instability by daytime eating

Following eating time schedule is important for being healthy. The advantages of eating meals at proper time of the day was well recognized and has been practiced over time and finds a mention in various ancient texts too.

A new study adds another level of evidence and has shown that meal timing can also affect mental health, particularly the levels of depression and anxiety-related mood. The study found that eating at night increased a participant's levels of depression and anxiety levels. The findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ().

In this study that mimicked night work, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in USA examined the effects of eating during the day and at night as opposed to only during the day.

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‘Daytime eating during the sunlight hours may help to stabilize mental health in people experiencing circadian misalignment such as shift workers.’
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What is Shift Working and How Meal Timing Affects their Mental Health ?

Any work schedule that is outside of the typical daytime hours is referred to as shift work, and this can involve rotating schedules as evening, night, or early morning shifts ().

In industrial societies, shift workers make up to 20% of the labor force and are generally in charge of various essential healthcare services, manufacturing work, and other critical services such as police and firefighters.

The brain's core circadian clock and everyday activities, such as sleeping and waking up and fasting/eating cycles, are frequently out of sync among the shift workers. They also run a 25 to 40% higher risk of developing anxiety and depression, which is very significant.

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Participant Details

For the randomized controlled study, the investigators enrolled 12 males and 7 women in total 19 subjects. Participants undertook a Forced Desynchrony procedure in low light for four days of length 28-hours causing their behavioral cycles to flip by 12 hours by the fourth day, replicating night work and throwing their circadian rhythms out of whack.

The daytime-only meal intervention group had meals on a 24-hour cycle, while the daytime and nighttime meal control group had meals on a 28-hour cycle resulted in eating both during the day and night, which is typical for night workers. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two meal timing groups. Every hour, the team measured the degrees of depression and anxiety levels in the participants ().

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Daytime Eating Helps Combat Mental Disorders

The researchers discovered that participant’s mood levels were greatly impacted by when they ate. Compared to baseline, the daytime and night-time meal control group members experienced higher levels of depression and anxiety-like moods throughout the simulated night shift.

The daytime meal intervention group, in comparison, experienced no changes in mood throughout the simulated night shift. Participants who had more circadian misaligment displayed more depressive and anxiety symptoms. They discovered that among individuals in the daytime and midnight eating groups, anxiety-and depressive-like mood levels rose by 16% and 26%, respectively. This rise was not observed in the group of participants who only ate during the day, indicating that meal timing may affect mood vulnerability.

These findings support the idea that timing food consumption could reduce the risk of mood vulnerability in those whose circadian rhythms are out of sync, such as shift workers, persons who are jet lagged, or people with circadian rhythm disorders ().

References:

Daytime eating may benefit mental health - (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/964188)
What Is Shift Work? - (https://www.sleepfoundation.org/shift-work-disorder/what-shift-work)
Daytime eating prevents mood vulnerability in night work - (https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2206348119)

Source-Medindia

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