Straining at a job while everyone else is asleep can put your mental health at risk. According to new research, restricting eating to daylight hours may help reduce your chances of developing depression or anxiety.
When a normal internal body clock is disrupted, such as by being awake during typical sleep hours, can negatively impact mood and emotional well-being of an individual.
Studies suggest myeven after years spent on a night shift roster our body will not fully adapt to the altered schedule. In fact, the negative effects appear to be worse the longer the biological clock is frustrated.
So how can we protect shift workers like nurses, security guards and firefighters, who make up 30 percent of the global workforce, from mental health problems while maintaining crucial 24-hour services?
Melatonin and light therapies they are already being investigated as solutions. Now researchers are proposing another potential panacea: altering meal times.
“Our findings open the door to a new sleep/circadian behavior strategy that could also benefit people experiencing mental health disorders.” He says neuroscientist Sarah Chellappa, who helped conduct the randomized trial while working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“Our study adds to a growing body of evidence finding that strategies that optimize sleep and circadian rhythms can help promote mental health.”
The typical hormonal balance of the human body fluctuates throughout the day based on its circadian clock, and evidence suggests that late-night eating can mess with metabolism.
That could be part of the reason why shift workers tend to have a higher body mass index and a higher waist-hip ratio than day workers.
Altered glycemic control is also a common risk factor for mood disturbance. In addition, depression and obesity often go hand in hand in a vicious circle that elevates the risk and severity of either condition.
With these findings in mind, the researchers are investigating whether avoiding late-night meals could improve the well-being of shift workers.
This is still an emerging area of research, but this recent trial suggests that limiting meals during the day could help prevent mood vulnerabilities associated with night work.
Over the course of two weeks, 19 participants underwent sham night work in a randomized controlled trial.
Meals between half of the group were eaten during the day and at night, while the other half only ate during the day.
All other parts of the test were the same, including calories consumed, sleep duration, physical activity, and lighting conditions.
When simulated night workers were served meals during the day Y at night (as is common among many shift workers), the authors found a 26 percent increase in depression-like mood levels and a 16 percent increase in anxiety-like mood levels compared with a reference measure. The group that only ate during the day reported no such mood swings.
Even more convincing is the fact that those people whose circadian rhythms showed the greatest degree of misalignment were also more likely to show symptoms similar to depression and anxiety.
“We found evidence that meal timing had moderate to large effects on mood levels similar to depression and anxiety during simulated night work, and that such effects were associated with the degree of internal circadian misalignment,” they said. the authors. write.
“These findings offer a proof-of-concept demonstration of an evidence-based mealtime intervention that can prevent mood vulnerability in shift work settings.” they add.
The randomized trial was rigorously designed, albeit small in scope, but due to the design of the experiment, the findings cannot tell us how or why the timing of a meal appears to have such a dramatic effect on a shift worker’s mood.
More research is needed to explore whether overnight glucose intolerance might play a role. results of another recent randomized trial they suggest that only eating during the day can prevent glucose imbalances that shift workers otherwise develop.
There is also room for future studies to explore whether a misaligned circadian rhythm can change the gut microbiota in a way that worsens mental health.
Like the human hormonal system, the gut microbiome is also closely linked to the human circadian rhythm, and when a biological clock is misaligned, studies suggest that the gut microbiome can become disordered and promote inflammation.
Furthermore, an altered gut microbiome has condition bound to symptoms of anxiety and depression.
“Meal timing is emerging as an important aspect of nutrition that can influence physical health,” He says Chellappa.
“But the causal role of timing of food intake on mental health remains to be tested.”
The study was published in PNAS.
