- Restricting eating to a brief 8-hour window daily could result in a higher risk of death from heart attack and stroke, according to a new study.
- Researchers report that people who practice this time-restricted eating plan also had poorer outcomes if they had existing cardiovascular disease or cancer.
- This study was observational, so it is hard to draw definitive conclusions, but it does add to the growing body of studies on the pros and cons of time-restricted eating.
People who follow one of the more popular time-restricted eating strategies, 16:8 intermittent fasting, may have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death than those who don’t fast or employ other fasting techniques, according to a new study.
The
Intermittent fasting — where people purposefully restrict the hours during which they consume their daily calories —has become a trendy way to help lose weight, improve cholesterol, increase metabolism, and potentially reduce the risk of certain chronic diseases.
However, this new research casts some doubt as to the long-term health benefits of this eating strategy.
Researchers looked at a group of 20,000 adults who answered questions about their dietary patterns for the annual 2003-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (
The researchers said they found that the participants who practiced 16:8 intermittent fasting were 91% more likely to have died from cardiovascular disease than those who didn’t practice this type of fasting.
They also reported that those with existing cardiovascular disease who consumed all their calories between an 8 and 10-hour frame also had a 66% higher risk of dying from heart disease and stroke.
In addition to the fact they found no benefit to time-restricted eating on death risk in general, the researchers also noted that among people with cancer,…
Read the full article here