It is often said that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Now, there's some science to back it up and convince morning meal skippers to grab a bite before starting off.
Many health and medical authorities are concurring that skipping breakfast is not only a bad idea; it can also lead to serious problems over time.
According to Dr. Elizabeth Thomas, an endocrinologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, who led a study on how skipping breakfast affects the body, during the six to eight hours of sleep that the average person requires each night, the body doesn't get enough carbohydrates to burn, so it switches onto the stored fat as fuel instead. This causes the body to become insulin-resistant and have low blood sugar.
If a person repeatedly skips breakfast, that low blood sugar level can turn into serious hypoglycemia, which can cause dizziness, weakness, rapid heart rate and a tingling sensation.
Breakfast skippers, especially adolescents, increase their risk of heart disease and obesity. Links have also been made between eating breakfast and a reduced craving for sweets for the rest of the day.
On the other hand, Heather Leidy, an assistant professor of exercise physiology and nutrition, says that cravings for sweets would continue to rise over the course of the day if breakfast is skipped.
Those who do not want to have a heavy morning meal need not drastically change their morning routine.
The British Journal of Nutrition published a study that shows how nuts are the perfect food for breakfast because they are high in good fat content; they are able to keep blood sugar levels stable until lunch time, and they are also digested more slowly by the body, making it feel full longer.
Dr. Richard D. Mattes, author of the study, said that nuts such as peanuts, peanut butter, and almonds help sensitize the body, which has become insulin-resistant from the many hours of not eating, so that it can respond better during lunch when the "second meal effect" kicks in.
"It's the second meal effect that's really the interesting phenomenon because what that says is that you have a moderation of blood sugar over a very prolonged period of time now. It expands not just for the hour or two hours after breakfast but all the way to lunch and beyond lunch now," he said.
Eating breakfast every day, especially one with a healthy dose of nuts, will lower your risk for heart disease, obesity, menstrual irregularities, depression, diabetes and a host of other health problems that afflict both the body and mind.
