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Protein as a “Midnight Snack” May Raise A.M. Blood Sugar

by Lisa Schofield | March 1, 2021

Consuming protein at night increases blood sugar amounts the next morning in the morning for healthy people, according to research presented at The Physiological Society’s Future Physiology 2020 conference.

Having high blood sugar levels after eating is linked to health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Previous research has shown that a snack a few hours before a meal can help control blood sugar levels, which may partly explain why the first thing we eat each day (breakfast) tends to cause blood sugar to rise higher than other later meals do.

Th study investigated whether waking up at night to eat protein might suppress blood sugar spikes the next morning. Surprisingly, the blood sugar response to breakfast was higher when participants had consumed protein rather than plain water at 4 a.m. According to the researchers, these unexpected findings may be informative for people trying to improve their control of blood sugar levels.

One explanation the researchers believe causes this finding is that the body simply doesn’t expect or need much food to be consumed during the night and so the protein itself was turned into sugar. This may result in the body having more carbohydrate already available upon waking such that the energy in the breakfast can less easily be used or stored, so it builds up more in the blood.

The researchers studied 15 healthy young men and women. The participants were woken up at 4 a.m. to drink 300 ml of a water either with or without 63 grams of whey protein. They then went back to sleep and at 9 a.m. were provided with a standard breakfast, with blood samples collected for two hours afterward to check the blood glucose response. This was repeated by each participant consuming the opposite preparation, for comparison of the glucose response to the same breakfast in the same person and see the effects of the night-time protein.

Eleanor Smith, who presented the work, said: “Future research will look at whether this applies to older and overweight people who tend to have more problems controlling their blood sugar levels. It would also be interesting to know to what extent our findings are due to eating at an unusual time or the type of protein consumed.”

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