Silent Heart Damage: How Skipping Breakfast and Eating Late Nights Is Increasing Heart Attack Risk in Young Indians

Heart attacks are striking Indian adults up to a decade earlier than their Western counterparts, largely due to poor dietary habits, urban stress, and sedentary lifestyles. Skipping breakfast and eating late at night, habits once thought harmless, are now recognized as major contributors to the rising threat of heart attacks among young Indians. Emerging research reveals these disrupted eating patterns are directly linked to increased cardiac risk and poor outcomes, even in individuals with no prior history of heart disease. 

Research has shown that regularly skipping breakfast increases the risk of heart attack and cardiovascular mortality by up to 27–35%. A study from India found that young adults who missed breakfast were more susceptible to high blood pressure and abnormal metabolic responses, both of which can accelerate atherosclerosis and plaque instability in the arteries. Skipping the first meal of the day can cause the body to undergo prolonged fasting, which elevates stress hormones like cortisol and increases cardiac risk factors. Late-night eating further compounds this risk. Consuming dinner less than two hours before bedtime impairs the body’s natural metabolic cycle, disrupts glucose regulation, and increases inflammation, all of which foster conditions ripe for myocardial injury. When skipping breakfast is combined with late dinners, the odds of a poor outcome after a heart attack, including recurrent events and death within 30 days, rise four- to five-fold.

Young adults juggling irregular work hours, frequent dining out, and digital distractions are often the most affected. Healthcare experts urge Indians to adopt regular meal timings: a wholesome breakfast with fruits, dairy, and complex carbohydrates, and an early, light dinner with a minimum two-hour gap before sleep. These simple habits can dramatically reduce “silent” heart damage and safeguard the next generation from avoidable cardiac events.