notytony

Hello! Good morning. I thought I should explain myself on the topic here in detail (because people, especially the ones commenting under your post are looking to be spoon-fed). Your concern is genuine, but your substantiation, irrelevant (you used a personal experience - not sound data) In these podcasts, I provide the final outcomes of multiple trials I have read on the topic instead of describing one trial at a time - this is boring, time consuming and not laypeople friendly. Still people do not trust doctors with simple explanations (but those with controversial takes only). Thats how social media goes - unfortunately. Ask the real doctor for evidence (why early dinner is a myth), but trust the health-coach fraud without questions (late dinner kills). Stay with me. This effort is called Brandolini's Bullshit Assymmetry Principle (everyone should read on it). Yes, there is research on meal timing. No, it does not show what you (or people) claim. Eating late does seem to do a few things to the body in the short term. That part is real. But no study has ever shown that moving dinner earlier makes you healthier in the long term, live longer, age slower, or get sick less. Not one. And no health organisation in the world tells people what time to eat dinner. One very careful study (Harvard, 2022) fed 16 people the exact same food, controlled their sleep, light and movement, and just changed the timing. Eating late made them hungrier, burned slightly fewer calories, and changed how fat tissue behaved. But it was 16 people for 6 days. It measured body chemistry, not health. Pooled studies show early eating leads to about 1.8 kg more weight loss over a few months. Small. Short. And probably just because people ate less. So the whole "Eat your dinner earlier" is based on the above thin foundational evidence base. A generalized recommendation to have dinner early may not work for everyone due to the work and lifestyle they have. So "forcing this myth" on people will give them "food anxiety" and in general, "make them feel insecure" about their life choices - including work, sleep and eating (which may be healthy in any case around their routine). Now lets look at the real studies: The biggest study that compared timed early versus late eating found no difference at all (eat only in the morning-to-afternoon, eat only in the afternoon-to-evening, pick your own 8-hour window, or just follow normal healthy-diet advice) - Camacho-Cardenosa et al 2026 A Japanese study followed nearly 72,000 people for 19 years. Eating dinner after 8 p.m. versus before 8 p.m. made no difference to death from heart disease or stroke. The only thing that mattered was having irregular dinner times. So consistency matters, not earliness - Jingyun Tang et al 2021 A US study of 33,000 adults found the lowest death rate in people who ate across an 11–12 hour window. Squeezing it to 8 hours or less went with 30% higher death rates overall - and more than 50% higher heart deaths in older adults. If anything, the population data warns against squeezing your eating hours too hard and too early - Ziling Mao et al 2025 Nobody has ever tested early vs. late eating for ageing or lifespan in humans. Expert reviews of this field say it outright: there is no data on meal timing and human longevity. No guideline says anything about dinner time. The American Heart Association looked at this and concluded there isn't enough evidence to say what the best times to eat are. The American Diabetes Association still doesn't recommend intermittent fasting. A Nordic review found the evidence too weak and inconsistent to base any recommendation on. India's own ICMR-NIN 2024 guidelines have 17 recommendations - none about dinner time. And finally, my patients are told the opposite. European liver guidelines tell people with liver disease to eat three meals and three snacks, and call the late-night snack the most important one, because it covers the long gap between dinner and breakfast. American gastroenterology guidelines tell cirrhosis patients to eat something between 7 and 10 p.m. For people with cirrhosis, muscle loss, frailty, or pregnancy, a long overnight fast is harmful. That said, the short term benefit maybe for those trying to lose weight where eating early stops you eating at night. That's a portion-control trick. Nothing to do with overall well-being or longevity. So dear friend(s) "Eat and early dinner to be healthy" is nothing, but an "old wives' tale and a "grandma's mythical advice." Hope this is clear.