How a fasting diet could double heart attack risk
IT’S the dieting trend that has been endorsed by everyone from Elon Musk to Jennifer Aniston.
But it appears that intermittent fasting might not be the magic bullet for weight loss.
Researchers now think such dieting could be damaging to long-term health.
Those who only eat during eight hours of the day are at almost twice the risk of heart attack and stroke later in life, a study found.
Experts said it showed why people should exercise caution when adopting trendy diets before the effects are fully known.
Time-restricted eating, a type of intermittent fasting, involves limiting the time for eating to between four and 12 hours over a 24-hour period.
Previous studies linked timerestricted eating to improved cardiometabolic health measures such as blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels.
Now early research involving 20,000 adults found those who followed such an eating plan were 91% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who were normal eaters.
The dieting schedule also did not reduce participants’ chances of death from any cause, according to findings being presented at the American Heart Association’s Lifestyle Scientific Sessions 2024 conference this week.
Many on a time-restricted eating diet consume food only during an eight-hour window and fast for the rest of the day.
This was found to be associated with a greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease when compared to people who ate during 12- and 16-hour windows.
Professor Victor Wenze Zhong, of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China, said: ‘Our research clearly shows that... a shorter eating duration was not associated with living longer.’ The research did not consider other possible contributory factors, such as participants’ weight and cholesterol, at the start of the study or over the eight-year follow-up period.