A lot of research has been done in recent years regarding the habit of eating at night. Experts, both in the medical and nutritional fields, confirm that the time in which food is consumed can be relevant and have an important impact on human well-being and health.
Let’s find out at what time it is best to eat meals and when instead it is highly discouraged. To try to improve your lifestyle and help optimize the functioning of your body, it is preferable not to eat at night.
Eating at night can damage memory
According to various experts, to optimize your lifestyle and to maintain general well-being, it is highly not recommended to eat during the night hours. Consuming meals during these hours could interrupt heart rhythms, thus leading to not exactly positive consequences. A recent study has, in fact, highlighted a consequence in particular for which it should be necessary to avoid eating at night: the possible impairment of memory and learning abilities.
In support of this argument, there are some researchers of the David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, which explain why it is important to establish times to consume the main meals needed, i.e. breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The tests were carried out on laboratory mice, but the scientists explained that the results obtained can be compared to those that would be obtained if such experiments were replicated on humans. Scientists have tested the animals’ ability to recognize novel objects.
To be able to do this, they divided the guinea pigs into two groups. The first group followed a regular daily routine, while the second group was administered food during the night hours. In this way, the researchers learned that the group of mice that had more difficulty recognizing a new object was the second.
Later, the scientists tested the side effects of after-hours meals with experiments related to the feeling of fear. They thus noticed that long-term memory decreased significantly in the guinea pigs of the second group. Long-term memory and the ability to recognize novel objects are both managed by the hippocampus, which affects the ability to associate experiences through memory and organize and imagine novel memories.
Conclusions
The researchers also explain that recognition ability and memory are related to one protein, i.e. the CREB. When this protein is less active, memory worsens. Analyzes carried out on laboratory mice have shown that eating according to a regular daily routine helps maintain the activity of this protein.
Therefore, thanks to the researchers of the UCLA, it has been shown that eating at night, when we should sleep, is not good for well-being at all but above all to our health.