Breakfast may help control blood sugar

Breakfast is often called the most important meal of the day, but its health benefits have been widely debated.

Now a new study suggests that eating breakfast may actually be important especially for people who want to lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in the United States found that having breakfast may help the body keep blood sugar levels stable.

Around one in nine

adults worldwide has diabetes, making blood sugar control an important health concern.

The researchers studied how eating breakfast in the morning affects hormones that help control blood sugar, including insulin and glucagon.

These two hormones work in opposite ways. Insulin helps lower blood sugar while glucagon helps raise it when the body needs more glucose.

After a meal insulin tells the liver to store sugar for later use while glucagon signals the liver to release glucose into the blood.

The researchers wanted to understand how glucagon affects the liver after a person eats and how its effects change during the following hours.

They found that when glucagon levels rise in the morning the liver may continue releasing glucose instead of storing it even when insulin and blood sugar levels appear normal.

This could help explain why blood sugar may remain high throughout the day in people with type 2 diabetes.

Researchers now plan to carry out more studies to better understand how eating or skipping breakfast affects the body and blood sugar control.