Anna Kurzaeva (via Getty Images)

If you’ve been reading about dieting lately, you’ve probably seen claims that intermittent fasting, where you stop eating for periods of time, can harm your heart health.

A new study has found that dieters, especially those who eat within eight hours, are 91% more likely to develop heart disease than those who don’t.

But is it true?

Now, let’s ask the study authors

The study’s senior author, Victor Wenze Zhong, head of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, said himself that the preliminary study’s results were not conclusive.

“Although this study confirmed an association between an 8-hour eating window and cardiovascular death, this does not mean that time-restricted eating causes cardiovascular death,” Dr. Zhong said. .

In fact, this study has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.

And since publishing the press release on which many of the papers were based, the study authors have added a poster presentation of the research summary, which is still available only as a press release.

Additionally, there is the fact that this study is based on an observational study. In this case, data on participants’ diets began with a survey (from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) in which participants self-reported their food intake.

This is a fairly unreliable method, the press release confirms, stating that “Limitations of this study include reliance on self-reported dietary information and may be influenced by participants’ memory and recollection.” “This may lead to an inaccurate assessment of typical dietary patterns.”

External factors were also not fully considered in this study

The study authors linked self-reported dietary data from 2003 to 2018 to a database of deaths from 2003 to 2019 maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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While it’s convenient, it doesn’t take into account external factors that can make intermittent fasting less effective than non-dieters.

“Factors that may influence health, other than daily meal times and cause of death, were not included in the analysis,” the press release acknowledged.

Dr. Pam Taub, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Diego Health, told NBC News, “This looks at two days’ worth of data and makes some very large changes from a very limited snapshot of a person’s lifestyle. “This is a retrospective study to draw conclusions.”

That doesn’t mean the results are never true, but until a gold standard, blinded, randomized controlled trial shows the same results, it might be a good idea to do whatever works best for your health when it comes to diet. yeah.

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