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Intermittent fasting is a popular diet method that is simple in theory and implementation. You burn calories during certain times of the day and don’t eat at all during other times.
This disciplined approach to dieting helps many people achieve the discipline they need to lose weight, and some studies show that it countless health benefitsinclude Blood pressure improvement.
But new, unpublished research presented this week at the American Heart Association meeting suggests that intermittent fasting can have serious effects on cardiovascular health.
In an analysis of more than 20,000 U.S. adults, the study found that people who ate within eight hours a day, or fasted for at least 16 hours, were 91 percent more likely to die from heart disease. found.
This appears to increase the risk of death from heart disease or stroke by 66% in patients who already have heart disease. Cancer patients who used this method of intermittent fasting also had a higher risk of dying from cancer.
“We were surprised to learn that people who followed an eight-hour time-restricted eating schedule were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease,” said study lead author Victor, head of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Wenze Zhong said. A Chinese university medical school stated in a paper: statement About work.
“While this type of diet has been popular due to its potential short-term benefits, our study shows that mealtime This clearly shows that there is no association between shorter life and longer life.” ”
At first glance, these findings are surprising, especially given the diet’s growing popularity. But, as Zhong cautions, the findings are not conclusive.
“Although this study confirmed an association between 8-hour food restriction and cardiovascular death, this does not mean that time-restricted eating caused cardiovascular death,” he said in a statement. .
Some of his colleagues in the field are more skeptical. As Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition research at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, pointed out, the study has not yet been published, so it remains unclear how researchers will control for demographic and lifestyle differences that could explain the increased mortality. It is unclear whether it was possible.
“Did they all have the same level of disposable income and the same level of stress?” Gardner said. Said washington post. “Or maybe people who eat less than eight hours a day work three jobs and are under such high stress that they don’t have time to eat?”
In other areas of science journalism, Matthew Harper says: status frankly I wrote about research: “You shouldn’t waste your brain glucose thinking about it.”
Harper points out that the study was based on self-reported dietary data by respondents. And the truth is, most of us, intentionally or not, are not being honest about our eating habits. Sometimes we forget, sometimes we lie to ourselves.
Harper, who received a summary of the study from the AHA, said the researchers did not specifically ask respondents whether they were intermittent fasting, but instead looked for people who only ate during short periods of the day. It seems like it was. That means people who skipped meals for other reasons, such as poverty or eating disorders, may have survived the crisis. And don’t forget that some people who realize they have poor heart health may turn to fad diets. This means that the apparent causality may be reversed if the person later dies from a heart attack or stroke.
“This is a great finding that should tell people in nutrition to consider this issue more seriously,” Harper concluded. “For others, it says nothing at all.”
Overall, the results may not be really alarming yet, but they do highlight the challenges of nutritional science and the need for more research into intermittent fasting.
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