Skipping Breakfast..

Irregular eating habits such as skipping breakfast are often associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, but the precise impact of meal times on the body's internal clock has been less clear.

A new Tel Aviv University study now pinpoints the effect of breakfast on the expression of "clock genes" that regulate the post-meal glucose and insulin responses of both healthy individuals and diabetics.

The importance of the body's internal clock and the impact of meal times on the body were the subject of this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine, awarded for the discovery of molecular mechanisms controlling our circadian rhythm.

This TAU study was led by Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Wolfson Medical Center's Diabetes Unit. It was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Julio Wainstein and Dr. Zohar Landau of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Wolfson Medical Center's Diabetes Unit; Prof. Itamar Raz and Prof. Oren Froy of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Prof. Bo Ahrén of Lund University in Sweden. It was recently published in Diabetes Care.

"Our study shows that breakfast consumption triggers the proper cyclic clock gene expression leading to improved glycaemic control," Prof. Jakubowicz says. "The circadian clock gene not only regulates the circadian changes of glucose metabolism, but also regulates our body weight, blood pressure, endothelial function and atherosclerosis.

"Proper meal timing—such as consuming breakfast before 9:30 AM—could lead to an improvement of the entire metabolism of the body, facilitate weight loss, and delay complications associated with type 2 diabetes and other age-related disorders."

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