Skipping Breakfast: Bad For The Heart

Here at L-arginine Plus, we seek to bring you the latest news when it comes to your health, and what you can do to improve it. After all, our product was specifically developed to not only lower blood pressure and give better cardio health, but also to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Earlier this week, Harvard university released the results of a new study, determining links between breakfast and heart health. This study was featured in an article on Forbes.

In theory, skipping breakfast seems to be something that would be healthier. Less calories taken in, probably means more weight loss, right? Wrong. Before the study was released, skipping breakfast has been linked to health risks, like obesity and high blood pressure, but has always been explained as people just indulging more on extra meals, after skipping the first meal. However, the Harvard study has debunked this myth and has pointed out that skipping the early meal keeps your body in a state of fasting, and disrupts your body’s normal metabolism.

As we sleep throughout the night, the body is in a state of fasting. This puts extra stress upon the body. Eating in the morning, hence the term 'break fast' breaks this state of fasting in the body and allows the body’s metabolism to function properly. According to the article...

"Prolonged fasting...leads to increases in diastolic and systolic blood pressure, blood concentrations of insulin, triglycerides, free fatty acids and LDL-cholesterol, and to decreases in blood concentrations of HDL-cholesterol... These are all the textbook risk factors for major heart trouble."

Eating breakfast in the morning seems like it can be a pretty good idea. Researchers at Harvard University sought to seek a relationship between skipping breakfast and these negative consequences. The study took health records of nearly 27,000 men, who are all healthcare professionals between the ages of 45 to 82 at the time the study began. The researchers specifically looked at correlations in lifestyle choices (like skipping breakfast) and the health outcomes over a 16 year period. Here are the results from the study...

"Men who skipped breakfast were 27% more likely to experience heart attack or to die as the result of coronary heart disease. The men who skipped breakfast were more likely to be single, smokers, employed full-time, to drink more alcohol, were younger, and were less likely to be physically active than people who ate breakfast. Controlling for a slew of these and other risk factor for heart disease – like alcohol consumption, smoking history, body mass index, regular doctor visits, quality of diet, TV watching, activity level, and sleep habits – did reduce the link between skipping breakfast and heart disease, but didn’t obliterate it. The number of times per day the men ate wasn’t linked to heart risk."

It seems that the Harvard researchers did in fact find some results showing a correlation between skipping breakfast and negative effects to heart health. So what should you do? Eat your breakfast! However be sure to choose something appropriate to eat. The article does make a point that eating something unhealthy for breakfast, like doughnuts, may not be the best option and may counteract the effects. Make healthy food choices for breakfast is a very smart way to improve your heart health.

To read the entire article on Forbes, please click here.