No Seriously, We Really, Really Need To Stop Skipping Breakfast

We’ve all experienced the morning rush – you get up, shower, travel to work, or set up your desk from home.

We’re so focused on making sure we start the day on time, breakfast often becomes an afterthought. And, when do have something to eat it’s usually a slice of toast or a small bite of a banana. 

But, skipping breakfast might be bad for your immune system, according to a new study. Missing out on the so-called most important meal of the day could lead to an increased risk of heart disease.

Researchers say that the study, carried out in mice, is among the first to show that skipping meals triggers a response in the brain that negatively affects immune cells.

“There is a growing awareness that fasting is healthy, and there is indeed abundant evidence for the benefits of fasting,” lead author Filip Swirski, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York, said.

“Our study provides a word of caution as it suggests that there may also be a cost to fasting that carries a health risk,” Swirski says.

The study shows that there is a link between the nervous and immune systems. Researchers aimed to better understand how fasting for anything from a few hours to a more severe fast of 24 hours affects the immune system.

They analysed two groups of mice – one group at breakfast right after waking up, and the other had no breakfast. Blood samples were collected when they woke up, four hours later, and then eight hours later.

When looking at the fasting group, the scientists saw a difference in the number of the white blood cells called monocytes that are made in the bone marrow and travel through the body, where they play many critical roles, from fighting infections, to heart disease and cancer.

90% of these cells disappeared from the bloodstream of the fasting mice, and the number further declined at eight hours. Meanwhile, monocytes in the non-fasting group were unaffected, researchers found.

In the fasting mice, the researchers found that the cells travelled back to the bone marrow to hibernate, and production of new cells in the bone marrow diminished.

The cells survived longer as a consequence of staying in the bone marrow, and aged differently from the monocytes that stayed in the blood.

The researchers continued to fast mice for up to 24 hours, and then reintroduced food, according to the study published in the Immunity journal.

The cells hiding in the bone marrow surged back into the bloodstream within a few hours, leading to a heightened level of inflammation.

Instead of protecting against infection, these altered monocytes were more inflammatory, making the body less resistant to fighting infection, the scientists say. 

The findings highlighted that fasting elicits a stress response in the brain –potentially what makes people “hangry” (feeling hungry and angry).

“Because these cells are so important to other diseases like heart disease or cancer, understanding how their function is controlled is critical,” Swirski.

Excuse us while we pour out a bowl of Shreddies.