Health Tips: Taping into circadian rhythms for food and blood pressure

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WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion, Bianca Belair, has been upfront about her former challenges with night eating. “I ended up having this obsession with food where I was binge eating at night and I was gaining all this weight,” she admits. In the ring and in her life, she’s discovered that timing matters -- and when you eat is as important as what you eat.

There are wide-ranging, disease-fighting benefits from limiting your food intake to the hours the sun is shining and eating the majority of calories before 3 p.m. That’s because the sun positively influences how a variety of your hormones work. Dr. Mike’s book “What to Eat When” is the go-to source for info on this, but we’re always happy to share a new discovery on the benefits of timed eating.

A lab study out of the University of Kentucky indicates that if you have Type 2 diabetes restricting mealtimes to an eight- to 12-hour window -- say 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- may prevent blood pressure from staying high overnight. In healthy people, BP goes down while they sleep, but there’s often no dip for people with diabetes, and this is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease as well as stroke and heart attack.

So if you have diabetes, follow your body’s circadian rhythm for food -- it influences your blood pressure’s circadian rhythm. That’s because when you eat affects a cascade of hormones and other bioactive chemicals that affect your metabolism as well as blood vessel dilation or constriction, respiration and heartbeat.