Why is Late Night Eating Bad for You? | Human Longevity

• Highly processed foods and refined sugar, will spike your blood glucose levels. While what you eat matters when you eat can be just as important. The lowest blood sugar spike is in the morning, and the highest is in the evening, for the exact same meal and quantity of food.
• What is going on at nighttime? It could be melatonin. In the evening, about 2-3 hours before our normal bedtime, our pineal gland secretes melatonin. Melatonin binds to receptors on the pancreas, telling the pancreas to stop secreting insulin. It essentially tells the pancreas to go to sleep. And If there’s no insulin, your blood sugar stays high.
• This has implications not just for people with diabetes, but for all of you with just borderline elevated sugars. One study showed that people with high normal and borderline fasting blood glucose levels were associated with lower hippocampal volumes, the structures involved in cognition and memory. And we know that hippocampal atrophy is associated with certain neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
• Genetics plays a role as well. There’s a variant of the MTNR1B gene that about a third of the population has that makes pancreatic cells more sensitive to the effects of melatonin, resulting in less insulin secretion, and a higher blood sugar spike.
• Recommendation: try to have your last food intake at least a few hours before you go to bed, and before the increase in natural melatonin

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References:
Increased Melatonin Signaling Is a Risk Factor for Type 2 Diabetes
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2816%2930160-7

Melatonin Receptors in Pancreatic Islets: Good Morning to a Novel Type 2 Diabetes Gene.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19377888

Roles of Circadian Rhythmicity and Sleep in Human Glucose Regulation
https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/18/5/716/2530790

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