Eating before bedtime poses risk of hypertension

Individuals who make eating before bedtime a habit risk developing hypertension, a study reports.

In the current population-based retrospective cohort study, researchers looked at the annual health check-up data collected from the residents of Iki City, Nagasaki Prefecture, in Japan. The analysis included 2,930 individuals who were free of hypertension at baseline (mean age 57.0 years, 42.8 percent men).

Eating before bed was characterized as eating within 2 hours of bedtime. The primary study endpoint was incident hypertension, defined as blood pressure ≥140/90 mm Hg or initiation of blood pressure-lowering medications.

A total of 909 incident cases of hypertension were documented over an average follow-up of 4.5 years. The corresponding incidence rate of hypertension in the group of individuals who ate before bedtime was 82.8 per 1,000 person-years, which was higher than that in the group of individuals who ate dinner early in the evening (65.8 per 1,000 person-years).

Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression analysis confirmed that eating before bedtime conferred a 23-percent higher risk of subsequent hypertension (hazard ratio, 1.23, 95 percent confidence interval, 1.05–1.44; p_trend=0.01).

The association remained significant even after adjusting for other risk factors, such as age, sex, current smoking status, current alcohol intake, regular exercise, obesity, elevated blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, and dyslipidaemia.