Eating dinner early can help lower blood sugar! Those who eat late, please reflect consciously

People with high blood sugar are more prone to obesity, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and cancer than normal people.

Many people work very hard to control staple foods and design recipes, but they are likely to ignore the important accomplice of high blood sugar - eating too late for dinner.

Recently, a study published in the authoritative medical journal “Diabetes Care” showed that:

Eating late dinner is a blood sugar disaster; for the average person, it is wise to fast within 4 hours of bedtime.

Change your dinner time to lower your blood sugar

To explore whether refeeding in the presence of elevated endogenous melatonin levels, such as before bedtime, could lead to disturbances in blood sugar control, researchers from the United States and Spain set up the study.

A total of 845 Spanish adults aged 18-70 were included in the study, divided into two mealtimes:

Early dinner group - eat dinner 4 hours before regular bedtime;

Late dinner group - Eat dinner 1 hour before your regular bedtime.

All subjects were randomly assigned to one group and then switched to another group to repeat the test on another night.

In the end, the research team found that late dinner led to a 6.7% decrease in insulin AUC and an 8.3% increase in glucose AUC.

Simply put, the later dinner time is, the lower the insulin level and the higher the blood sugar level.

The researchers say the association is plausible because insulin works by lowering blood sugar levels.

“Our findings may be important for strategies to prevent type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Frank A.J.L. Scheer, director of the biology program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

He further added: “The findings apply to people who eat close to bedtime, others who eat at night (including those with jet lag and eating disorders), and people who use melatonin supplements heavily.”

For most people, it’s wise to fast for at least four hours before bed, the researchers said. That is, if you fall asleep at 23:00, it is best to have dinner around 7:00 pm.

Two keys to blood sugar around dinner

More and more studies have shown that eating the wrong dinner not only affects blood sugar but also increases the risk of obesity, heart disease, indigestion, and other diseases.

How to eat dinner is more friendly to blood sugar, intestines, etc.? Here are two key figures summarised:

Dinner time: preferably no later than 8:00

Combining with modern people’s work and rest habits, 5-7 pm is the best time for dinner. Overeating or eating too late is not good for digestion and blood sugar.

It is best to eat before 7 pm, but no later than 8 pm.

If you don’t have time, don’t eat dinner too close to bedtime, and, at the same time, eat less often the later you eat.

Fasting time: 3-4 hours before bedtime

The time from dinner to sleep is preferably no less than 3 hours, to allow enough time for the stomach to absorb, but no more than 8 o’clock at the latest.

If you sleep late at night and feel hungry, you can drink a cup of soy milk or milk between 9 and 10 o’clock, and if it is not enough, you can add some fruit. These foods are more satiety, easy to digest, and have less impact on sleep and blood sugar.

10 Diet Tips for Sugar Control

Sugar control depends largely on diet, including eating time, diet structure, and amount of food.

Have breakfast before 8:30

People who eat before 8:30 a.m. have lower blood sugar levels and insulin resistance, which can help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a report presented at the 2021 American Society of Endocrinology Annual Meeting.

Adjust the breakfast structure

Breakfast must have more than 2 kinds of meat, eggs, milk, beans, nuts, vegetables, and fruits.

change the order of meals

When eating, some people come up to eat steamed bread and rice first, and then eat vegetables. As a result, they eat more of the staple food and less of the vegetables.

For most people, the eating order of “fiber→protein/fat→carbohydrate” is more blood sugar friendly.

The same kind of food, choose coarsely processed

The finer the food, the softer it is cooked, the faster the sugar rises; and those foods that are not soft enough and need to be chewed carefully will help stabilize blood sugar after a meal.

Choose simple cooking methods

The glycemic index (GI) of a food refers to the relative speed at which carbohydrates in a certain food enter the human body within 2 hours under a standard quantitative (usually 50 grams), causing blood sugar to rise.

The simpler the cooking method, the slower the sugar rise. For example, the GI of instant oatmeal is 83, while the GI of oatmeal that traditionally needs to be cooked by itself is only 59.

slow down eating

Eating too fast will make people unconsciously eat more than usual, which is not conducive to the control of total calories; in addition, the rapid entry of food into the gastrointestinal tract is not conducive to full absorption, but also causes a rapid rise in blood sugar.

The slower you eat, the easier it is to feel full, and the slower your sugar rises. Breakfast should be no less than 15 minutes, and lunch and dinner can be controlled within half an hour.

“Neutralizes” the glycemic index by combining

For example, the GI of rice is 83, the GI of fried pork with celery is ≤15, and the fried pork with rice + celery becomes a low glycemic index (49.9). Click to view the glycemic index (GI) of common foods

eat small meals often

Eating small and frequent meals can not only avoid high blood sugar caused by eating too much at each meal, but also avoid preprandial hypoglycemia caused by too long intervals between meals.

Diabetic patients must eat three meals a day. The ideal is to add a little meal in the morning and afternoon. Of course, the calories should be removed from the main meal.

Add coarse grains to staple food

The greater the total carbohydrate, the greater the glycemic potential. Try not to eat too many sweets and staple foods.

For diabetics and overweight people, the amount of staple food can be appropriately reduced to 30% to 50% of the total food, of which coarse grains account for half of the staple food. The reduced main consumption of vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, and nuts is replaced.

Cook as much as possible at home

Eating out dishes are often high in oil, sugar, and salt, which is not conducive to keeping blood sugar stable.

If you must go out to eat, you can eat more vegetables, especially green vegetables, and high-fat, high-calorie dishes such as braised pork, braised prawns, and lion head are fine.

For various staple foods, such as various puff pastries, be careful not to be greedy. When ordering soup, do not choose a thick soup with a lot of starch, so as not to increase the intake of sugar.