Intermittent fasting, an eating plan in which you only eat at specific times, is growing in popularity in the United States and abroad. But the new study, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, raises some caveats. Scientists surveyed more than 20,000 adults who completed a dietary survey and found that as of December 2019, those who limited their eating hours to eight hours a day outperformed those who kept it for longer. found that they were also more likely to die from cardiovascular disease. Regular eating schedule.

The results of this study were recently presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions.

Study co-author Victor Wenze Zhong, an epidemiologist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told NBC News’ Alia Bendix that it is too early to recommend fasting based on the study results.

“There is nothing here to suggest that I would make a clinical recommendation one way or another,” said Sean P., a cardiologist at New York University Langone Heart Hospital who did not contribute to the findings.・Mr. Heffron added. today.comI’m Linda Carroll.

The study only confirmed a correlation between intermittent fasting and mortality, but did not show that the dietary pattern causes death from heart disease, and suggests that other factors may be involved in this relationship. There is a possibility that there are. However, Penny Chris Etherton, a nutritionist and member of the AHA’s nutrition committee, told NBC News that “until we have more information or the research results are better explained, people should continue to use intermittent fasting.” We may consider suspending it,” he said.

Time-restricted eating, a type of intermittent fasting in which people eat only at specific times each day, has long been associated with improvements in blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels, the AHA said in a statement. But some of the early studies were in mice, and most of the human trials that followed were small, lasting only one to three months, they wrote. washington post“Anahad O’Connor”

The new study involved participants recalling what they ate during two 24-hour periods as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003 to 2018. The researchers used the amount of time people recalled eating during those two days to determine if they were doing intermittent fasting. .

To collect information on participant deaths, the team used the National Death Index. All participants were 20 years of age or older, approximately half were male, and 73% self-identified as non-Hispanic white adults. The researchers followed the participants for an average of about eight years. People who ate their entire meal within eight hours were 91 percent more likely to die from heart disease during the study period than those who ate their entire meal over 12 to 16 hours.

The study is inconclusive as to why this trend emerged. However, Zhong told NBC News that people who eat for only eight hours have lower lean muscle mass, which in recent studies has been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular death.

Importantly, there are several caveats to this finding. The reliance on self-reported dietary habits is one of the limitations of the study, as it may be misremembered or may not be representative of participants’ typical diets, according to the AHA statement. It has become.

The dietary recall is “incomplete,” said Deepak Bhatt, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Faster Heart Hospital who was not involved in the study’s findings. today.com. “People often can’t remember what they ate for breakfast. This type of research requires detailed dietary information collected in real time.”

Furthermore, the amount of data regarding each participant’s dietary habits is small. “This is a retrospective study that looks at two days of data and draws very important conclusions about a person’s lifestyle from a very limited snapshot,” said University of California cardiologist Pam Taub. . the city of San Diego, which is not involved in the investigation, told NBC News.

Other researchers want to know more about what people were eating and what factors influenced their eating habits. For example, participants did not record whether they were attempting intermittent fasting as an option. Benjamin Horn, an epidemiologist at the Intermountain Heart Institute who was not involved in the study, said some people may have had limited access to food due to medical conditions or treatments that affected their appetite. He says there is. new scientistof Clarissa Brincat.

Christopher Gardner, a nutrition researcher at Stanford University who did not contribute to the study, said: washington post He said he wanted to examine possible demographic differences among study participants.

“Did they all have the same level of disposable income and the same level of stress?” Gardner told the publication. “Or perhaps the people who ate less than eight hours a day were working three jobs and had such high stress that they didn’t have time to eat?”