First, dinner is too late. Some families don't have dinner until 8, 9 o'clock, or even past 10 p.m. To wait for their sons and daughters-in-law to come home for a meal together, the elderly endure hunger despite their stomachs being empty. When children are hungry and want to eat, their grandparents always say, "Wait a little longer, Mom and Dad will be back soon." In the long run, gastrointestinal diseases are naturally inevitable.
Second, the proportion of meals is imbalanced. The ratio of food intake for the three meals a day should be determined according to each person's lifestyle and health condition. Generally, the ratio for breakfast, lunch, and dinner should be 3:4:3; if you sleep between 9-10 p.m., the ratio should be 4:4:2. This can ensure energy supply during activities and allow the gastrointestinal system to rest during sleep.
Third, nutritional excess. Dinner is often abundant with dishes that are high in protein, fat, and energy.
The problems with dinner seriously harm people's physical and mental health. Survey data shows that angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, and diabetes, which are harmful to the health of middle-aged and elderly people, are closely related to long-term consumption of rich dinners.
A large amount of high-protein, high-fat, and high-energy food increases the coagulability of blood lipids, making it easy to deposit on the blood vessel walls and promoting atherosclerosis and thrombosis. It can also cause the liver to produce more low-density and very-low-density lipoproteins, transporting excess cholesterol to accumulate on the artery walls, creating a "snowballing" situation. As people age, their body's ability to process sugar decreases. Concentrating daily caloric intake at dinner accelerates the decline in glucose tolerance, increases the burden on the pancreas, promotes pancreatic aging, and ultimately leads to diabetes. Diabetes and vascular disease, in turn, become causes and effects of each other, forming a vicious cycle.
If you go to bed soon after eating, the full stomach can press on the liver, pancreas, gallbladder, and other digestive organs,极易发生 pancreatitis, cholecystitis, and in some cases, even sudden shock and death during sleep. A dinner that is too large and rich causes digestive secretions to be insufficient for demand, leading to food stagnation in the gastrointestinal tract. High-protein foods, acted upon by anaerobic bacteria in the intestines, can produce harmful substances such as amines, phenols, nitrogen, and methyl indole, which can directly irritate the intestinal wall and enter the bloodstream, damaging important organs like the heart, liver, kidneys, and brain. Under the action of intestinal bacteria, bile acids can also generate carcinogens such as deoxycholic acid. Therefore, a rich dinner is an important risk factor for malignant tumors, especially colon cancer.
An experimental result shows that overeating at dinner can lead to frequent nightmares during sleep, which over time can cause insomnia, neurasthenia, and other conditions. The reason is that the tense and overloaded work of the gastrointestinal tract sends a large amount of information to brain cells, and the "waves" of excitement spread to the cerebral cortex, exciting and fatiguing the central nervous system. Some experts suggest that patients with long-term insomnia and nightmares might consider examining their dinner habits. A smaller, more refined dinner might alleviate the suffering from insomnia and nightmares.