SEATTLE -- Having a late dinner led to unhealthy metabolic patterns, according to a carefully controlled study.

Eating objectively late -- 1 hour after rising melatonin levels mark the start of biological night -- increased post-prandial glucose intolerance, with an 11% higher 4-hour glucose area under the curve ( P =0.008) and no difference in insulin compared to early dinner, 3 hours prior to the dim-light melatonin onset (DLMO).

This difference was not mitigated by delaying sleep after late dinner in the carefully controlled inpatient testing conditions of the Dinner Time 2 trial, as Daisy Duan, MD, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, reported at the SLEEP meeting hosted jointly by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.

The

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