Eating a late dinner increases your risk of cancer by 25 per cent, study finds

Say goodbye to your pre-bed dessert
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For many Londoners, eating a late dinner is a regular occurrence.

With long hours and lengthy commutes, by the time dinner is served it can be well past 9pm.

Yet, this could be doing major damage to our health as a new study has found those who eat routinely after 9pm and don’t leave a two hour gap between eating and sleeping are 25 per cent more likely to get cancer than those who do.

Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health found the reason for this is because before you go to sleep, your metabolism will begin to wind down but eating will make it speed up again.

This will disrupt the hormones that effect the body’s internal clock which raises the risk of both breast and prostate cancer as they are both linked to hormonal cues.

To find these results, the researchers looked at 872 males (621 with prostate cancer) and 1,321 females (1,205 with breast cancer) who had never worked a night shift.

These subjects were asked about their sleeping and eating patterns and the researchers found that those who went to sleep two or more hours after eating reduced their cancer risk by 20 per cent, but when they went to bed within two hours of eating, their risk increased by 25 per cent.

Lead author Dr Maolis Kogevinas said: “Our study concludes that adherence to diurnal (daily) eating patterns is associated with a lower risk of cancer. These findings stress the importance of evaluating timing in studies on diet and cancer.”

While more research is needed, meal-prepping is a great way to make sure you’re eating as soon as you're home and not pushing your bedtime back any further.

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