The Daily News – July 10, 2025

If you work nights, a new study says, when you eat, not just how much could protect your most prized organ, and that’s your heart. It’s well known that night shift work increases your risk of heart attacks and strokes for a wide variety of reasons. But now researchers say there might be a simple fix, eat during the daytime only even if you’re working overnight. In a tightly controlled experiment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 20 healthy participants were put on simulated night shifts, no clocks, no phones, and no windows. Everyone got the same amount of sleep and the same meals, but with one key difference. One group ate during the night, the other ate the same food, but only during daytime hours. What were the results you may ask? Well, only the group eating at night showed a spike in cardiovascular risk markers like higher blood pressure and a protein linked to blood clots. And what about the daytime only eaters? Well, no change in heart risk even though they were still awake all night long. And according to the study’s author, this strongly suggests that it’s not just what you eat or how much, but when that impacts your heart health during shift work. She said this, our study controlled for every factor that you could imagine that could affect results. So we can say that it’s the food timing effect that is driving these changes in the cardiovascular risk factors. This isn’t just for night shift workers. Anyone with irregular sleep think frequent travelers, insomniacs, or people with late night schedules might benefit from shifting meals to earlier in the day. It’s still early research, but the message is promising. If you work nights, try eating like you don’t because your heart may thank you. So would you try daytime eating during night shifts or let us know in the comments below? And if you found this information helpful, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell for more updates. As always, thank you so much for joining us on the Daily News.