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New research challenges the health benefits of intermittent fasting, a popular diet often praised by celebrities and health experts alike.

Intermittent fasting is a well-known practice where you eat all your food within 8 hours and then fast for the remaining 16 hours. But an American Heart Association study released Monday, March 18, found that restricting eating time to eight hours a day increases your risk of dying from heart disease by 91 percent.

Researchers led by Dr. Victor Zhong of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine analyzed nearly 20,000 U.S. adults, with an average age of 49, who followed intermittent fasting, also known as the 16:8 plan.

According to a study presented at the AHA Epidemiology and Prevention Conference in Chicago, Illinois, people who restricted their eating to eight hours a day had less cardiovascular disease than those who ate over a 12- or 16-hour period. They were 91 percent more likely to die. . Among participants with pre-existing cardiovascular disease, eating 8 to 10 hours a day was associated with a 66 percent increased risk of death from heart disease or stroke.

On the other hand, cancer patients who ate for at least 16 hours a day had lower cancer mortality rates. The researchers also found that time-restricted eating did not reduce the overall risk of death from any cause.

“Restricting your daily eating time to a short period of time, such as eight hours a day, has become popular in recent years as a way to lose weight and improve heart health,” said study lead author Dr. Zhong. “However, the long-term health effects of time-restricted eating, including the risk of death from any cause or cardiovascular disease, are unknown.”

“We were surprised to discover that people who followed an eight-hour time-restricted eating schedule were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease.” However, our research shows that shorter eating times are not associated with longer lives compared to the typical eating range of 12 to 16 hours per day. “It’s clearly shown,” he said.

This study analyzed data from participants in the 2003 to 2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Mortality Index database for people who died in the United States from 2003 to December 2019. compared with.

The researchers noted that the study’s findings were limited because it relied on self-reported dietary information and did not focus on other factors that may influence participants’ health. admitted.

“Overall, this study suggests that while time-restricted eating may be effective in the short term, it may have negative effects in the long term. Once the study is published in its entirety, It will be interesting and useful to learn more about the details of the analysis,” said Dr. Christopher D. Gardner, Lemborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

“One of those details concerns the nutritional value of the meals specific to different subsets of participants. Without this information, the nutritional It is not possible to determine whether density is an alternative explanation. Second, it must be emphasized that the classification of time-restricted diets into different bins was determined based on only 2 days of dietary intake. “There is,” he said.

Approximately half of the participants were male and half were female. Approximately 73% of participants were non-Hispanic white adults and 11% were Hispanic. Eight percent of participants were non-Hispanic black adults, and nearly 7 percent of adults identified as another race.

“It is also important to compare demographic and baseline characteristics between groups categorized into different time-restricted eating windows,” Gardner added. “For example, in terms of weight, stress, traditional cardiometabolic risk factors, or other factors associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes, the group with the shortest amount of time on a diet is significantly lower than those following other eating schedules. Was it unique in comparison?

“This additional information will help us better understand the potential independent contribution of the short-restriction dietary patterns reported in this interesting and provocative summary.”

In June 2023, a similar study analyzed weight loss results in obese adults who participated in intermittent fasting compared to traditional calorie counting. The results, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that the group that ate an 8-hour time-restricted diet had improved insulin sensitivity compared to a control group that consumed calories at any time for at least 10 hours a day. It turned out that it did. .

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