(NewsNation) — There are countless studies about the risks and benefits of what you eat. But a new study has found a link between colorectal cancer and when you eat.
”We wanted to see if the timing affects us at all,” said Edena Khoshaba, lead investigator and medical student at Rush University Medical College in Chicago.
Khoshaba’s study concludes that eating within three hours of bedtime at least four times a week could increase the chance of developing colorectal cancer.
In the study of 664 people getting a colonoscopy, 42% called themselves late eaters. Of that group, 46% were more likely to have an adenoma (a small noncancerous lesion) discovered during the colonoscopy.
While an adenoma is not cancer, as many as 10% of them become cancerous over time.
The theory of why late eaters are more likely to have adenomas is this: eating close to bedtime may throw off the body’s “peripheral circadian rhythm” – the internal body clock in the gastrointestinal tract, not the brain.
If you’re eating late at night, your brain thinks it is nighttime and your gut thinks it is daytime, Khoshaba said in an interview at this year’s Digestive Disease Week conference in Washington, DC.
One possible flaw in the research, according to Khoshaba, is this was an observational study, not research specially aimed at the timing question. She also say the people surveyed were asked to recall their meals over the past day, and not all of those recollections may be accurate.