Several people dining. /
Research by the University of Murcia professor Marta Garaulet shows that this practice affects glucose tolerance
The research team led by University of Murcia professor Marta Garaulet, in collaboration with researchers Richa Saxena and Frank Scheer from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Harvard University, has shown that eating late affects glucose tolerance , especially in those people who have a risk genetic variant in the melatonin receptor; it is the variant (MTNR1B) that is present in 50% of the population in Spain.
This important study, financed by the National Institute of Health of the United States and carried out thanks to nearly a thousand volunteers in the Region of Murcia, has managed to demonstrate that those who present this variant have a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the event that they eat late on a regular basis. The conclusions of the study have just been published by the journal Diabetes Care, the most important in its field.
The results obtained suggest that endogenous melatonin, which is produced during the night when bedtime approaches, is involved in alterations in glucose metabolism when eating late. Those who have the aforementioned genetic variant present a lower secretion of insulin by the pancreas when they eat late, since they usually do so in the presence of melatonin. That is, the results suggest that, in the presence of food, it may be melatonin that causes the pancreas to reduce insulin production and cause blood sugar to rise. The body begins to produce melatonin around half an hour before going to bed and previous studies led by Marta Garaulet have already established that a late dinner is considered to be one that occurs approximately two hours before going to bed.
Jesús López and Marta Garaulet, UMU researchers. /
“Thanks to this research we have been able to establish the relationship between the functioning of insulin in the pancreas and melatonin. This is something really important, especially because a genetic variant has been determined that increases the risk of type 2 diabetes in half the population”, explained Marta Garaulet, who particularly highlights the relevance of these conclusions due to the high number of volunteers and the very conclusive results obtained.
In this sense, Jesús López Minguez, also a UMU researcher, emphasized “the great challenge that it has meant for our team and for the volunteers, since the study was randomized and crossed over approximately 1,000 healthy volunteers who attended the tests at the Virgen de la Arrixaca Hospital on two occasions at late hours.
The researchers monitored glucose tolerance and insulin secretion on two different days. In the first of the study sessions, the volunteers underwent a glucose tolerance curve after ingesting a dextrose serum taken four hours before their usual time to go to sleep; in the second session, the dextrose solution was ingested one hour before their usual time of sleep. In addition, all of them were monitored in their eating and sleeping habits for a week.
“In previous studies we had identified that the melatonin receptor is a gene involved in diabetes, that shift workers are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and that taking melatonin on a regular basis increases blood sugar levels,” Richa explained. Saxena, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. With these previous results, this study was launched whose conclusions “are applicable to approximately one-third of the population of the industrialized world, who consume food close to bedtime,” added Frank AJL Scheer, director of the Brigham Chronobiology medical program. and Women’s Hospital.
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