Experts: The time of day you eat could make a difference to your mental health

We know that a bad diet can impact your mood and mental health. Can the time of day you eat play a role?

If you work overnights and your eating schedule is thrown off, how does it impact your mind?

Grinding away at a job while everybody else sleeps can put your mental health at risk. According to new research, confining your dining to daytime hours might help reduce the odds of developing depression or anxiety.

When a normal internal body clock is disrupted, such as by being awake during typical sleeping hours, it can negatively impact an individual’s mood and emotional well-being.

Studies suggest even after years spent on a roster of night shifts our body won’t fully adapt to the altered schedule. In fact, the negative effects appear to be worse the longer a biological clock is thwarted.

So how can we protect shift workers like nurses, security guards, and fire fighters – who make up to 30 percent of the global workforce – from poor mental health while still maintaining crucial around-the-clock services?

Melatonin and light therapies are already being investigated as solutions. Now researchers are putting forward another potential panacea: altered meal timing.

“Our findings open the door for a novel sleep/circadian behavioral strategy that might also benefit individuals experiencing mental health disorders,” says neuroscientist Sarah Chellappa, who helped conduct the randomized trial while working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

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This is an interesting story. We know that a bad diet can impact your mood and mental health. Can the time of day you eat play a role?

If you work overnights and your eating schedule is thrown off, how does it impact your mind?