TIME-RESTRICTED EATING LINKED TO HIGHER RISK OF CARDIOVASCULAR DEATH

Skipping breakfast might not be so good for your health, after all

Amajor new study could rock people’s opinion of timerestricted eating (a form of intermittent fasting), after finding the practice could significantly increase the chances of death due to cardiovascular disease. The new research, presented to the American Heart Association, claims that restricting your eating to a period of fewer than eight hours per day raises your risk of death due to cardiovascular disease by a staggering 91 per cent.

The study evaluated 20,000 participants’ diets and health outcomes over a period of 17 years. However, it failed to identify even one cause of death for which the risk was reduced by restricting eating to an eight-hour window. A total of 2,797 deaths were recorded among the participants in the study, 840 of which were from cardiovascular causes. The average age of the study participants was 49. The study’s senior author Prof Victor Wenze Zhong, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, was surprised by the results. “[I] had expected that long-term adoption of eight-hour time-restricted eating would be associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular death and even all-cause death,” he told BBC Science Focus.

“Even though this type of diet has been popular due to its potential short-term benefits, our research clearly shows that, compared with a typical eating time range of 12–16 hours per day, a shorter eating duration wasn’t associated with living longer,” he added.

Despite the study’s compelling statistics, scientists are unsure exactly why time-restricted eating could heighten the risk of cardiovascular death. One possible explanation, Zhong said, could be that restricting eating reduces muscle mass. “Loss of lean body mass has been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality,” he said.

Time-restricted eating has gained a lot of attention over the past few years for the various health benefits it’s purported to offer, such as weight loss, and reductions in blood sugar and cholesterol levels. But even if those benefits stand up to scrutiny, the new study casts doubt over the practice’s long-term efficacy.

“This study suggests that time-restricted eating may have short-term benefits, but long-term adverse effects,” said Dr Christopher Gardner, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. But Gardner emphasised that the study still has to be peer-reviewed and details of what foods participants ate have yet to be revealed.

This information could reveal nutrient density as an alternative explanation to the study’s results, which Zhong acknowledges.

“Based on the evidence as of now, focusing on what people eat appears to be more important than focusing on the time when they eat,” he said.

“Time-restricted eating may have short-term benefits, but long-term adverse effects”