Intermittent fasting has become the most talked about diet trend of this decade. In this type of fasting, there is no hassle of keeping an eye on the amount of calories or carbs. In this fasting, it is important to decide the time of eating, not to see what you are eating. Many people associated with the tech industry adopt it. Many Hollywood stars also say that it keeps them fit. Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also once said that he starts the week by fasting for 36 hours. Science has also supported this type of fasting so far.
Research so far has indicated that prolonging the night fast can improve metabolism. Fasting helps in repairing cells and it can slow down the aging process of humans. However, nutrition experts have been warning for a long time that skipping meals to stay healthy cannot do any magic. Experts have also been saying that doing so can be dangerous for people already suffering from diseases.
In intermittent fasting, the daily meal time is compressed into a small time frame. Under this, a person can eat for eight hours but has to fast for 16 hours. Apart from this, there are other models of time-restricted diets. One of these is to eat less for two days in a week and take a normal diet for five days. During this, there is no time restriction on what time you eat and for how long you don’t eat. But now a study has raised serious concern about this. This is in a way the first major study on this issue. In this study, data of more than 19 thousand adults was analyzed.
The researchers found that those who ate within an eight-hour window daily had a 135% higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease than those who ate within a 12- to 14-hour window. Increased cardiovascular risk means that a person is at a higher risk of developing heart disease, such as a heart attack, than other people based on their health, lifestyle and medical data. However, the study also found that intermittent fasting had no strong association with total mortality (deaths from any cause). But the risk of death from heart disease remained consistent across people of all age, gender and lifestyle.
In other words, the researchers found that there was no strong association between eating in a short time frame and total mortality. But the risk of death from heart disease was significantly increased. This study does not prove cause and effect, but the findings are important to challenge the notion that this type of fasting is completely safe and good for health.
For this, the researchers kept a record of American adults for eight years. To know their eating habits, the people included in it were asked to remember what they ate and drank on two different days (at an interval of about two weeks). Based on these ‘dietary recalls’, scientists calculated the average meal time interval of each person and considered it as their long-term routine.
According to this study, people who ate within eight hours daily had a higher risk of dying from heart and related diseases compared to those who ate within 12-14 hours. The researchers found that cardiovascular risk was increased in all social and economic class groups and this risk was highest in smokers and people already suffering from diabetes or heart disease. This means that such people should be especially careful about adopting a short time frame for food with strict restrictions for a long time.
The researchers found that this relationship remained even after changing the quality, quantity and frequency of food snacks and other changes in daily lifestyle. When we asked the researchers why the risk of death from heart disease was so high, while the total mortality figure was not so clear – is this an effect of biology or is there some bias in the data?
Victor Wenze Zhong, lead author of the peer-reviewed study published in the journal ‘Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research and Reviews’, said that diet is one of the biggest causes of diabetes and heart disease, so the link with more deaths from heart disease is not surprising.
Professor Zhong is an epidemiologist at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China. He says, “What was not expected is that the habit of eating at an eight-hour interval for many years was associated with an increased risk of death from heart disease.” This finding is contrary to the common belief, which has been supported by some small studies so far, that such a meal habit improves heart health and metabolism.
In an editorial published in the same journal, leading endocrinologist Dr. Anup Mishra discussed both the benefits and disadvantages of intermittent fasting. He says that many trials and analyses show its positive side that it can help in weight loss, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce blood pressure and improve lipid profile. He says that there is also some evidence of anti-inflammatory benefits.
It can help people control blood sugar even without strict calorie counting. It can easily be integrated with religious or cultural customs of fasting and is easy to follow. “But the potential side effects include nutrient deficiencies, increased cholesterol, excessive hunger, irritability, headaches and the difficulty of following such a diet for a long time,” says Professor Mishra. “If diabetes patients are not monitored, fasting can cause their blood sugar to drop dangerously. It can encourage eating junk food. Elderly or chronically ill people may experience weakness and muscle mass loss.”
This is not the first time intermittent fasting has been criticized. A three-month study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2020 showed that it caused very little weight loss among those involved in the study, most of which was muscle mass. Another study indicated that intermittent fasting could cause side effects such as weakness, hunger, dehydration, headaches and difficulty concentrating. Professor Mishra says that the new study has given a worrying indication of heart and related diseases.
When Professor Zhong was asked what precautions should be taken by people with heart disease or diabetes while doing intermittent fasting? He said that these findings indicate that dietary advice should be ‘personalized’, based on the person’s health and new evidence. He says, “Based on the evidence to date, it’s more important to say what people eat, not when they eat. At the very least, people should avoid following an eight-hour eating window for long periods of time to prevent heart disease or improve longevity.” The message of this study is that it’s not necessary to completely abandon fasting, but it needs to be adapted to the individual’s health. For now, the safest option is for people to focus less on the clock and more on their plate.
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