- A new study finds that meeting our daily energy needs through three relatively similar meals may be the best way to stave off cognitive decline.
- Skipping breakfast, according to the study, is associated with decreased cognitive health.
- The study also finds that tilting your energy intake toward one meal or another isn’t associated with rapid cognitive decline, but it doesn’t benefit your cognition as well as three balanced meals.
Food is fuel. It provides us with the energy that our body needs to function and also to stay healthy.
Previous research has focused on how the quality of the energy (food) we consume can affect our health, and experts have investigated cardiovascular Y metabolic health outcomes associated with when we eat.
However, there has been little research exploring the ways in which the distribution of our daily energy intake may influence long-term cognitive health and whether it has any impact on the risk of developing dementia.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO)Around 55 million people worldwide have dementia, and 10 million new cases are diagnosed each year. As the world population ages, the proportion of older people is steadily increasing, the WHO estimates that 78 million people will have dementia by 2030 and 139 million by 2050.
To better understand the effects that energy intake and meal timing have on cognition, a new study looks at the potential effect of different meal timings or temporal patterns of energy intake (TPEI) on cognitive decline.
The results show that consuming three balanced meals each is associated with better cognitive function, compared to other, less evenly distributed ways of consuming total energy intake, or TEI.
“To our knowledge, this study is one of the few population-based studies exploring the association of TPEI and cognitive decline, although the accumulation of studies has linked TPEI to health outcomes, including obesity, hypertensionY cardiovascular health”, the authors wrote.
The study also shows that skipping breakfast is associated with poorer cognitive function and faster cognitive decline.
The study was recently published in metabolism of life.
The researchers drew their conclusions from an analysis of data from the 1997-2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey.
Included in that data were the eating habits of 3,342 people in China for whom the survey had collected up to four repeat entries over 10 years. People were at least 55 years old, with a median age of 62.2.
The authors point out that 61.2% lived in rural areas and 13.6% had secondary education or higher.
People with severe cognitive impairment were excluded from the study.
At the beginning of the study period, each participant received a dietary assessment and a phone-based cognitive test in which they were scored on their immediate and delayed word recall, backward counting, and their agility in subtracting 7 from the numbers provided.
Cognitive scores ranged from 0 points to 27 points, with 27 points representing the highest level of cognitive health.
The researchers classified people’s meal times into six eating patterns:
- Equitably distributed: The people balanced their energy intake over three roughly equivalent meals per day. They consumed 28.5% of their daily energy at breakfast, 36.3% at lunch, and 33.8% at dinner.
- Dominant Breakfast: People ate three meals, but consumed most of their energy, 49.5% at breakfast.
- Dominant Lunch: People ate three meals, but consumed most of their energy, 64.3% at lunch.
- Dominant Dinner: People ate three meals, but consumed the most energy, 64.5% at dinner.
- Rich appetizer: People consumed 36.8% of their TEI in snacks.
- Skipping breakfast: People ate little or no breakfast, consuming only 5.9% of their TEI.
The pattern of skipping breakfast was linked to a cognitive decline of 0.14 cognitive test points per year, compared to the evenly distributed pattern.
Similar decreases were not observed for other standards.
Dr Clifford Segilneurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, who was not involved in the study, described this finding as Today’s medical news as “fascinating”.
“I think the takeaway would be that skipping a meal is worse if you choose to skip breakfast,” he said.
However, when the researchers modified the possible TPEIs into just four patterns (evenly distributed, breakfast-dominant, lunch-dominant, and dinner-dominant), all but the first were linked to lower cognitive function.
None of them, however, was associated with accelerated loss of function.
According to Dr. Segil, the study could “inadvertently support that we are in excess calories, and assuming we are in excess calories, we are obese. And I think that’s where most of this kind of research has been done, on excess calories in general health.”
Still, he noted, the study generally lines up with other research indicating that “splitting your energy and eating it at regular meals improves short-term cognitive function.”
“That supports what we’ve heard about other medical conditions.”
Previous investigation has indicated that the timing of meals affects the body’s circadian clock. In mammals, the circadian clock resides in two groups of nerve cells called suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)They are located in a region at the base of the brain called the anterior hypothalamus.
Dr. Hoon-Ki SungPh.D., associate professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, explained to MNT:
“We have two different types of internal clock (circadian rhythm). One is located in the brain (central clock or central circadian clock), and the other clock in some peripheral tissues, including fat, liver, intestine and retina (peripheral circadian clock). While the central clock is regulated primarily by light, the peripheral clock can be regulated by multiple factors, including the central clock and food.”
Dr. Sung suggests that circadian nutrition can refer to “a circadian rhythm diet or a circadian diet.”
He said this means it “keeps feeding rhythms in sync with its internal clock.” He noted that eating this way can include three meals, “as well as one meal [or] energy intake between meals.
Other studies have linked meal timing to improved cognitive function in the short term.
The Western three-meal-a-day program grew out of needs of employers and workers during the Industrial Revolution. Before that, two large meals a day, based on housework and farming, were more common.
“I think common sense says you should eat before the time of day when you’ll be the busiest,” added Dr. Segil. “Some people are busy in the morning, and that is why a great breakfast [is often] Recommended, especially for school age children.”
Regardless, more research is still needed on the long-term benefits of meal timing on cognitive health.
“Cognitive problems are multifactorial and there is still very limited understanding,” Dr. Segil concluded.
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