Dinner to bedtime is crucial in determining an important aspect of gut health. Dinner to bedtime can be defined as the time interval until going to bed after eating the dinner.
Dr Sudhir Kumar, whose Twitter handle goes by “@hyderabaddoctor” has recently shared an important piece of information on the microblogging platform.
“Early dinner (and >12 hour fasting between dinner and breakfast) has many advantages such as weight loss, lower risk of diabetes, cancer and death.
Late dinner on the other hand is not a #healthy habit,” he has shared in a series of tweets. He has also cited a research study highlighting the demerits of the random eating habit.
“In a research, patients whose dinner-to-bed time was less than 3 hours had 7.5 times higher risk of GERD, compared with patients whose dinner-to-bed time was 4 hours or more. These observations were consistent in both patients with non-erosive GERD and erosive #esophagitis,” he writes in another tweet.
“Shorter dinner-to-bed time was significantly associated with an increased odds ratio for GERD”
The study in reference highlights the close association between dinner to bed time and GERD.
It studied 147 GERD patients and 294 controls without GERD symptoms like heartburn and acid regurgitation.
It found that in cases where the dinner to bedtime was less than 3 hours the risk of GERD was 7.45 times higher than those cases where the dinner to bedtime was 4 hours or more.
What are the common symptoms of GERD?
GERD or gastroesophageal reflux disease is characterized by a burning pain in the chest. Other symptoms associated with GERD are backwash or regurgitation of food which usually tastes like sour liquid, pain in upper abdomen or chest, difficulty in swallowing, having a lump like feeling in the throat.
The burning sensation in the chest during GERD usually happens after eating a meal.
Read the tweet here: