Why Eating Late at Night may be Bad for your Brain

Humans have an internal clock. Your body and mind function better when they're kept on a regular schedule, to include eating and sleeping. When that schedule gets altered, disrupting your circadian rhythm, your body and mind suffer the detrimental consequences. And that disruption can be something as simple as eating late at night, when your mind believes that you should be fast asleep, dreaming of food, rather than consuming it.

And a new study, led by Dr. Christopher Crawford of UCLA, confirms what many of us realized, that disrupting our sleep cycle has an adverse effect on our cognitive functions, especially learning and memory, as well as our overall health. If you've ever experienced severe jetlag, you know the feeling.

Dr. Crawford detailed these adverse effects after studying two groups of mice. The control group was allowed to follow their normal circadian rhythms, that is, they were permitted to eat and sleep as normal at their normal times. The experimental group, however, was only permitted to eat when they would normally be sleeping. Both groups slept their normal amount of hours and ate their normal amount of food. All that was different was when they ate and slept.

After a few weeks of this, the mice were given learning and memory tests and, to make a long story short, the experimental group failed miserably. Dr. Crawford also documented changes to the hippocampus region of their brains, the section tasked with learning and memory functions.

they suffer the worst effects as they work the graveyard shift all week and then convert to a daylight shift over the weekends. If we regularly, for whatever reason, either stay up late or get up in the middle of the night and satisfy our food cravings, our circadian rhythm is thrown off and our cognition suffers.

These irregular eating and sleeping habits have other adverse side-effects as well, such as fatigue (duh!), depression, a compromised immune system, cardiovascular problems, weight gain and acid reflux. The lesson learned here: if at all possible, establish a normal eating and sleeping routine that's in harmony with your natural circadian rhythm and you'll improve your ability to learn AND remember where you left your car keys!

So in conclusion, eat healthy meals at the proper time and avoid getting or staying up late to dine on (usually unhealthy) food. Magickitchen.com can help you with that goal by providing nutritious and delicious meal options that are certain to please any palate and keep your body and mind working to their full potential.