Nutritional management, skipping breakfast, glycemic control, and cardiovascular risk on type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abstract Background Meal timing is an emerging field that investigates the influence of eating patterns on circadian rhythm and general health. There is still disagreement in the literature as to whether eating windows could impact weight gain and biochemical markers. Purpose 1- Evaluate the impact of nutritional interventions on weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), fasting blood glucose (FG), glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), LDL cholesterol (LDL-C), HDL cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides, systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), between 0th and 12th month in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2D); 2-Observe breakfast skipping and sleep disorders, and also analyze the influence of these data with possible changes in anthropometric and biochemical markers. Methods This experimental and observational study recruited 44 participants with T2D. The assessments were carried out in October 2022 and 2023. The nutritional assessment consisted of prescribing a personalized eating plan (Mediterranean diet and DASH). Statistical analysis: For the variables "breakfast habits", "nocturnal awakenings", and "sleep duration", the numbers of participants were converted into percentages of the total number of individuals. Parametric variables were compared using the paired t-test and non-parametric variables were compared by the Wilcoxon test. To evaluate the influence of the habit of eating breakfast and sleep disorders on quantitative variables, variations were calculated between the 0th and 12th month between participants who had or did not have the habit of eating breakfast and had or did not have sleep disorders. Parametric variables were compared using the unpaired t test and non-parametric variables using the Mann-Whitney test. Parametric data were presented as mean ± standard deviation and non-parametric data as median ± interquartile range, both accompanied by the dispersion of all repetitions. α<0.05 and P<0.05 were adopted. Results Significant reductions were found between the 0th and 12th month of FG, HbA1c, LDL-C, triglycerides, SBP, DBP, BMI, WC, and weight (p<0.0001). Regarding breakfast habits, in the 1st month, 77.3% of participants skipped this meal, reducing to 13.6% in the 12th month. For sleep duration, in the 1st month, 90.9% of participants slept less than 6 hours, reducing to 40.9% in the 12th month. For nocturnal awakenings, 70.5% of participants had at least 1 awakening in the 1st month, reducing to 54.5% in the 12th month. For influence analysis, no significant differences were found between changes in FG, HbA1c, LDL-C, triglycerides, SBP, DBP, BMI, WC, and weight on breakfast habit or sleep disorders, except for HDL-C and sleep disorders (p<0.005). Conclusion Nutritional management improved biochemical markers, reduced anthropometric data, regulated the eating window, reduced nocturnal awakenings, and optimized sleep duration in patients with T2D.