Research Highlights: A study of over 20,000 adults found that those who followed an 8-hour time-restricted eating schedule, a type of intermittent fasting, had a 91% higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. People with heart disease or cancer ...
As a big fan of IF, I find this really depressing.
Well it sounds pretty early on to draw that conclusion considering they didn't look into the health of the people skipping breakfast, nor what they eat. So if the only people skipping breakfast were already obese and at risk, perhaps that would have made their outcomes worse...
"One of those details involves the nutrient quality of the diets typical of the different subsets of participants. Without this information, it cannot be determined if nutrient density might be an alternate explanation to the findings that currently focus on the window of time for eating. Second, it needs to be emphasized that categorization into the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake,” he said.
“It will also be critical to see a comparison of demographics and baseline characteristics across the groups that were classified into the different time-restricted eating windows – for example, was the group with the shortest time-restricted eating window unique compared to people who followed other eating schedules, in terms of weight, stress, traditional cardiometabolic risk factors or other factors associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes? This additional information will help to better understand the potential independent contribution of the short time-restricted eating pattern reported in this interesting and provocative abstract.”
“Overall, this study suggests that time-restricted eating may have short-term benefits but long-term adverse effects. When the study is presented in its entirety, it will be interesting and helpful to learn more of the details of the analysis,” said Christopher D. Gardner, Ph.D., FAHA
“One of those details involves the nutrient quality of the diets typical of the different subsets of participants. Without this information, it cannot be determined if nutrient density might be an alternate explanation to the findings that currently focus on the window of time for eating. Second, it needs to be emphasized that categorization into the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake,” he said.
“It will also be critical to see a comparison of demographics and baseline characteristics across the groups that were classified into the different time-restricted eating windows – for example, was the group with the shortest time-restricted eating window unique compared to people who followed other eating schedules, in terms of weight, stress, traditional cardiometabolic risk factors or other factors associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes? This additional information will help to better understand the potential independent contribution of the short time-restricted eating pattern reported in this interesting and provocative abstract.”
Co-authors, their disclosures and funding sources are listed in the abstract.
Although I would say it's definitely wise to take a break from IF based on this preliminary data, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the individual diets, participants, and funding related to this study. It's possible with more info that one may still be able to practice IF with relative safety. We won't know until the full study has been scrutinized.
Hm. I am curious to see what the full study has to say. And as with any study, one isn't usually enough; hopefully more such studies will follow.
Regarding the short-term benefits, from the article:
Previous research has found that time-restricted eating improves several cardiometabolic health measures, such as blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels.
I don't quite follow the bit about "...categorization into the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake." Like, they just assumed people were doing constant IF based on looking at two days? That seems like a potential for trouble. Like, maybe the people who died fell off the bandwagon or something, idk?