Researchers explain why eating breakfast 'later and later' could be a sign to see your doctor

Delaying the first meal of the day could indicate it may be time to see your doctor, new research has found.

Breaking the fast in the morning, as the word 'breakfast' describes, is a pretty crucial part of our day.

According to WebMD, the ritual kickstarts our metabolism and gives us a helping hand when it comes to dishing up energy that we will need to focus while at work or at school, hence why it's considered the most important meal of the day by some.

Yet when our responsibilities and need for an early morning energy boost decline, such as in retirement, it's common to delay the healthy habit until much later than our bodies have been used to.

While the site warns skipping the morning meal entirely can 'throw off your body's rhythm of fasting and eating', new research has found pushing the first meal of the day back could also be a sign of bad health - and even damage life expectancy.

Researchers from Mass General Brigham said in their new study, published in Communications Medicine: "Meal timing, particularly later breakfast, shifts with age and may reflect broader health changes in older adults, with implications for morbidity and longevity."

The study proves breakfast remains the most important meal of the day (Getty Images)

In their study, the team examined data from 2,945 adults aged between 42 to 94 across two decades and found that 'as people aged, they tended to eat breakfast and dinner later.'

Meanwhile, participants with more health problems or 'a genetic tendency to stay up late' also had a tenancy to tuck in a little later.

"Importantly, eating breakfast later with aging was linked to a higher risk of death," the team continued. And here I was thinking that ageing increased your risk of death.

"Our research suggests that changes in when older adults eat, especially the timing of breakfast, could serve as an easy-to-monitor marker of their overall health status,” lead author Hassan Dashti, PhD, RD, a nutrition scientist and circadian biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said.

“Patients and clinicians can possibly use shifts in mealtime routines as an early warning sign to look into underlying physical and mental health issues,” he added as per a press release.

It can affect longevity (Getty Images)

In the statement, senior author Dr. Altug Didikoglu, MSc, of the Izmir Institute of Technology in Turkey said: "Up until now, we had a limited insight into how the timing of meals evolves later in life and how this shift relates to overall health and longevity.

"Our findings help fill that gap by showing that later meal timing, especially delayed breakfast, is tied to both health challenges and increased mortality risk in older adults."

What the research wants you to think is that not only is breakfast the most important meal of the day, but is even more so for older people, who aren't at greater risk of death naturally because they're older, but because of the timing that they eat breakfast.

"These results add new meaning to the saying that 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day,’ especially for older individuals," the doc explained.