14 Not just what you eat… but when you eat “You have a master clock in your brain and additional clocks in other parts of your body, including all of your organs, that are programmed to follow a cycle of daylight and darkness,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, an associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. “As part of this cycle, your body is more receptive to food intake and handling nutrients during the daytime compared to at night.” For example, your body is more sensitive to the actions of insulin earlier in the day. “Insulin helps direct energy fuels from food to different parts of your body,” St-Onge says. “Your body is more likely to take glucose (sugar) and triglycerides (fat) out of your blood and store them in appropriate places during the day. If you’re eating later at night when you’re less sensitive to the actions of insulin, more of these nutrients stay in your circulation and can have harmful effects, including increasing heart disease risk.” There’s not a magical hour in the evening after which eating is likely to be harmful. “There’s individual variability in how well you can handle nutrients at night,” St-Onge says. “But, in general you shouldn’t eat too close to bedtime. A reasonable guideline is to stop eating 2 to 3 hours before bed.” For heart health, St-Onge also recommends having a more consistent intake of calories during the day rather than infrequent, large meals. She explains that large meals can spike triglycerides and blood sugar compared to smaller meals. That can damage arteries and increase heart disease risk. However, if you are going to eat a larger meal, do it earlier in the day rather than later. “A recent study showed that people who consumed the bulk of their calories closer to bedtime tended to have higher body-fat stores than people who ate the bulk of their calories earlier in the day,” St-Onge says. Choose healthy fats Over the years, heart-healthy diet guidelines have shifted focus a bit as research has shed new light on what supports heart health. Whereas low- fat used to be the emphasis a few decades ago, now the emphasis is on choosing healthy, more unsaturated fats, such as in olive oil, nuts and avocados, rather than restricting all fat. For example, in a recent study, people at high risk of heart disease who followed a Mediterranean diet that emphasized either mixed nuts or extra-virgin olive oil had about a 30 percent lower risk of major cardiovascular events (heart attack or stroke) in a five-year period compared to people on a reduced-fat diet. Skip refined carbs Besides easing up on dietary fat, nutrition experts are putting new emphasis on limiting carbohydrates, particularly refined ones such as white bread and baked goodies, refined pasta, white rice, sugary cereals and snacks, sugar- sweetened beverages and candy. In fact, limiting sugar and white flour may be one of the most important things you can do for your heart. “An excess of refined carbs can raise your triglycerides and lower your HDL (good) cholesterol, increasing heart disease risk,” says Patrick Fratellone, MD. If your typical eating pattern tends to include too much of the foods you should limit and not enough heart-healthy foods, it’s time to nudge it in the other direction. The next page lists some superfoods you should consider for your heart. PAID CONTENT