If you’re one of those people who prefer to just skip right over your breakfast meal you may want to stop.
A study from Harvard School of Public Health found that men had a 27% higher risk of heart attacks or death when they regularly skipped breakfast.
Due to skipping the first and most important meal of the day, non-breakfast eaters were generally hungrier later in the day and tended to eat more food at night. Which could be the cause for metabolic changes and heart disease.
The research followed men, ages 45-82, from 1992 to 2008 and throughout the study 1,572 of the men suffered from cardiac events. Even after accounting for diet, physical activity, smoking, and other lifestyle factors, the association between skipping breakfast and heart disease persisted.
“Skipping breakfast may lead to one or more risk factors, including obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, which may, in turn, lead to a heart attack over time,” said lead research author Leah Cahill. The study mostly included Caucasian men, but women and people of color should be advised that skipping breakfast could also have major effects on them. Black men and women are already at higher risk for heart disease, so eating a regularly healthy breakfast will help in the long run.