Skipping Breakfast May Increase Heart Attack Risk, Harvard Study Suggest

Another reason to eat breakfast, and probably the most important, a study has found that skipping the first meal of the day can increase your chances for a heart attack.

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A study of older men found those who regularly skipped breakfast had a 27 percent higher risk of a heart attack than those who ate a morning meal. The Harvard researchers also added that these is no reason these findings should apply to other people too.

Other studies have suggested health risk with people eating breakfast such as: obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and other health problems seen as precursors to heart problems.

"But no studies looked at long-term risk of heart attack," said Eric Rimm, one of the study authors at the Harvard School of Public Health.

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The researchers aren't really sure why more people are at risk of a heart attack when skipping breakfast but here is what they think. People who don't eat breakfast are more likely to be hungrier later in the day and eat larger meals. Those meals mean the body must process a larger amount of calories in a shorter amount of time. That can spike sugar levels in the blood and perhaps lead to clogged arteries.

The researchers did not ask what the study participants ate for breakfast, and were not prepared to pass judgment on whether a fatty, sugary breakfast is better than no breakfast at all.

The new research was released Monday by the journal Circulation. It was an observational study, so it's not designed to prove a cause and effect.

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Researchers analyzed food frequency questionnaire data and tracked health outcomes for 16 years (1992-2008) on 26,902 male health professionals ages 45-82. Over the next 16 years, 1,527 suffered fatal or non-fatal heart attacks, including 171 who had said they regularly skipped breakfast.

The study suggested that men who reported not eating breakfast were younger than those who did, and were more likely to be smokers, employed full time, unmarried, less physically active and drank more alcohol.

With findings like this it's hard to believe that breakfast is not an important meal. Rimm Said, "It's a really simple message, breakfast is an important meal."