Skipping breakfast ‘could increase risk of dying from heart disease’

This article was taken from: https://inews.co.uk/news/health/skipping-breakfast-increase-heart-disease-risk-health-news/

By Florence Snead at I News UK

More than half of participants said they ate breakfast every day

Skipping breakfast on a regular basis could be linked to an increased risk of dying from heart disease, research suggests.

The decision to shun the meal is also a behavioural marker for unhealthy lifestyle habits, the study claims.

Researchers said skipping breakfast was associated with changes in appetite and feeling less full, elevated blood pressure and harmful changes in lipid or cholesterol levels.

Breakfast habits

To gather their findings, researchers at the University of Iowa collected information from 6,550 people from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1988 to 1994.

Those in the sample – who were aged 40 to 75 with no history of heart disease or cancer – were asked about their breakfast habits, with possible replies including “every day”, “some days”, “rarely” and “never”.

More than half of the participants (59 per cent) said they ate breakfast every day, while a quarter (25 per cent) said they had it some days.

Among those who had it less often, 10.9 per cent said they “rarely” ate it while 5.1 per cent said they never did.

The researchers said participants who never ate breakfast had an 87 per cent higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who had it every day.

Studies on subject ‘sparse’

“Breakfast is believed to be an important meal of the day, whereas there has been an increasing prevalence of skipping breakfast over the past 50 years,” the team wrote.

“However, studies on the health effects of skipping breakfast are sparse.

“It is imperative to understand the long-term health impact of skipping breakfast on cardiovascular mortality in the general population.”

The study has been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.