Eating late at night is linked to more liver disease
An analysis of nearly 200,000 people in three long-running US cohorts found that those who reported eating after dinner or after bedtime had 20% to 30% more fatty liver disease and cirrhosis. It's an association from self-reported habits, and a trial is now testing it directly.
Soma Labs3 min read
Most nutrition advice is about what to eat. A growing body of research looks at when. A study from Oregon Health & Science University, published online on October 9 in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, adds the liver to that picture.
What the researchers looked at
The team, led by OHSU hepatologist Robert Wilechansky with colleagues at OHSU and Harvard, used three large, long-running US studies: the Nurses' Health Study, the Nurses' Health Study II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together they include almost 200,000 participants who reported their diet and lifestyle habits over many years.
The researchers grouped participants by when they ate, with late-night eating defined as eating after dinner or after bedtime. They then compared those groups with reports of two liver conditions: metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD, the condition long known as fatty liver disease, and cirrhosis, severe scarring of the liver.
What they found
People who reported eating late at night had a 20% to 30% higher rate of liver disease than those who didn't, according to OHSU. Wilechansky described it as among the first long-term analyses to draw the connection to fatty liver disease explicitly. He also pointed out that only a small share of people with fatty liver disease go on to develop serious forms like cirrhosis.
Co-author Andrew McHill, a sleep and circadian physiologist at OHSU, has studied how eating at night affects metabolism. In the release he said the timing of behaviors like sleep, eating and exercise keeps showing up as important in this kind of research.
What it doesn't show
This is an observational study built on self-reported, broadly defined habits, and the authors say so. It can't show that late eating causes liver disease, and other differences between night eaters and everyone else may explain part of the link. The participants were also mostly health professionals, who aren't representative of everyone.
The next step is already under way. OHSU is recruiting for a study that will track eating times directly and test whether eating earlier improves measures of fatty liver disease. Until results like that exist, this is a signal worth following, not a reason to change a treatment plan. Anyone with liver concerns should talk to a clinician.
Where Soma fits
What interests us is the role of timing. The same meal, or the same measurement, can mean something different depending on when it happens. That's true for the body's clock, and it's true for the numbers we use to follow it.
Soma doesn't measure liver health and it doesn't diagnose. Soma Axon, the pod we're still building, is designed to take readings under the same conditions each week, and before each visit someone from Soma will ask about your sleep and when you last ate, so those details sit next to the numbers. Every value will come with its margin of error. The same instrument, every week explains why.
Sources, as of October 16, 2026: Wilechansky, Casey, McHill, Chan and Simon, Late-Night Eating is Associated with MASLD and Cirrhosis: The Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals' Follow-Up Study, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (October 2026); OHSU, Late-night eating may be bad for your liver, study suggests (October 9, 2026). This post describes research and isn't medical advice.