A startling result presented at a medical conference has raised questions about the safety of intermittent fasting. A popular weight loss approach that involves restricting meal intake to specified times.
The study, published in Chicago on Monday, discovered a troubling correlation between limiting meal times to eight hours per day and a 91% increase in the chance of dying from heart disease. However, the American Heart Association released simply an abstract. Scientists have speculated about the study’s procedural details. Nonetheless, the AHA ensures that the report was peer-reviewed by other specialists prior to its dissemination.
Research Findings
The study examined questionnaire responses in addition to death records from 2003 to 2019. Scientists noted that there was potential for errors because the study partially relied on forms that requested patients to recall what they had eaten over the course of two days. The patients’ mean age was 48, with men making up around half of the group.
Source: People
Zhong added that, while it was unknown how long the patients kept their intermittent fasting, the researchers assumed they did. The patients who fasted were mostly young men with greater BMIs and food insecurity.
According to their own data, they had decreased rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hypertension. “We controlled for all these variables in the analysis, but the positive association between 8-h time-restricted eating and cardiovascular mortality remained,” Zhong went on to say.
Intermittent fasting is not recommended for persons who:
- Are underweight.
- Have an eating disorder.
- Are you pregnant or breastfeeding?
- Take diabetic medications.
- Have a history of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).
- Have end-stage liver disease.
