Psychologists have long maintained that aopting a daily activity routine helps you get through the day with less stress. Now, science has discovered maintaining a regular daily dining schedule is just as important!
Mileposts along your daily ‘road’ help you keep track of where you are – behind or ahead of where you need to be to call it a success at the end of the journey. Like regular evaluation points in a pro-ject plan. Psychologists have long maintained that a ‘you’ who is on schedule is more confident and more motivated to press on. And a day when you’ve felt in control and motivated all along the way is a successful, happy day.
The inner ‘you’
But that’s just the conscious level of your daily experience. There’s also an unconscious level, in which your body responds – rightly or wrongly – to stresses that arise. And makes its own decisions about how to deal with those demands. Hormone levels rise and fall. Pain or relief may be regist-ered, at both the conscious and unconscious levels.
How successfully your body copes with your day depends on many factors – not the least of which is how well nourished it is, and how consistently you feed it.
Science says…
Depression has become one of the most serious social and personal problems of our post-Millennial Age. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that an estimated 332 million people around the world live with depression. And the situation is getting worse. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) last year revealed that the percentage of people suffering from depression has increased significantly over the past decade.
The good news…
… Is that a recent study has found that maintaining a consistent eating schedule could help ease depression. It’s just another manifestation of how a routine can help make your day – and life as a whole – better.
What they did
The new study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, analyzed data from more than 21,500 adults in Korea, collected between 2014 and 2022 by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention through a nationally representative health survey.
The scientists tracked how often participants skipped breakfast, lunch, or dinner throughout the week, and measured their mental health using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a standard depression-screening tool.
What they found
They found that adults who eat irregular meals are more likely to suffer depressive symptoms than those who stick to consistent mealtimes.
Moreover, it revealed that variables like skipping breakfast, or eating a diverse array of foods could increase or decrease the mental health impacts of inconsistent meals.
Researchers identified some biological processes that could help explain the correlation. Eating at ‘erratic’ times can throw off the body’s internal clock, disrupting levels of hormones such as cortisol and melatonin that play a direct role in mood regulation. Irregular eating was also linked to changes in gut microbiome and reduced production of short-chain fatty acids, which can influence brain in-flammation and emotional health.
Perhaps the most important finding of the study was that doctors and nutritionists have been right all along: Breakfast IS the most important meal of the day. Study subjects who skipped breakfast as well as having erratic mealtimes showed an even stringer association with depressive symptoms than others in the cohort who simply ate at irregular times of the day.
My take
Readers who’ve been sampling my wares for a while will know that common sense is a cornerstone of my food and wellness philosophy. It’s truly heartwarming to once again have that stance validated by science.
And this revelation comes at a time in our collective history where folks are concentrating more than ever on what they’re putting into their bodies. Hopefully, it will also be remembered as a time when we were just as concerned about when we take our daily sustenance…
~ Maggie J.