Breakfast kick-starts your metabolism, helping you burn calories throughout the day. It also gives you the energy you need to get things done and helps you focus at work or at school. Those are just a few reasons why it’s the most important meal of the day. Skipping the morning meal can throw off your body’s rhythm of fasting and eating. When you wake up, the blood sugar your body needs to make your muscles and brain work their best is usually low. Breakfast helps replenish it.
Harmful Effects of Skipping Breakfast
- Cause Migraine: The sugar levels in your body are low in the morning because of the long fasting that you go through at night. If you do not eat food in the morning, the body releases certain hormones to compensate for the low sugar levels. This process is called Hypoglycemia. While the process balances the sugar levels, it has side-effects; it leads to sudden rise in blood pressure, which in turn causes headaches and migraine.
- Slows the metabolism: When you skip a meal, the body functions slows down to preserve the fuel; the metabolism becomes slow. Besides, the prolonged fasting in the morning after not eating for the whole night reduces the body’s capacity to burn the calories, which in turn leads to fat accumulation. However, having a hearty meal in the morning gives the metabolism a boost and helps reduce weight.
- Trigger hair loss: One of the major harmful effects of skipping breakfast is that it may lead to hair loss. Consuming a meal that contains critically low levels of protein can have an adverse effect on the keratin levels in the body. Keratin is a critical component that triggers hair loss and stops hair growth. The breakfast is the most important meal of the day that plays an important role in promoting hair growth.
- Immunity goes down: When you skip breakfast, your immunity goes down. Periods of fasting appear to trigger damage to the cells and the body needs to be fed food regularly in order to maintain healthy levels of immune cells that fight infections and improve the action of fighter cells (T-cells) in the body.
- Increase Acidity: Not eating breakfast can cause increased bouts of acidity. “The body is mechanized to release acid in the stomach for digestion when the body feels hungry and needs fuel,” says doctors. “If this acid does not get food to process—which it inevitably doesn’t if we starve and/or don’t eat for several hours—it will surge up to the walls of the nearby areas like the stomach, food pipe, and heart and will lead to acidity.”
- Increases the risk of cancer: When you skip breakfast, it is highly likely that you may overindulge in food through the day. This in turn, increases the risk of obesity. According to research conducted by the Cancer Research UK, it was found that people who are obese are at high risk of developing cancer.
