Lifestyle interventions for weight loss have been reviewed (representative)

The safety of intermittent fasting, a popular strategy for weight loss by limiting food intake, has been called into question following findings presented at a medical conference.

The study released in Chicago on Monday showed that limiting mealtimes to eight hours a day was associated with a 91 percent increased risk of death from heart disease. The American Heart Association has only published an abstract, leaving scientists to speculate on the details of the study protocol. The study was reviewed by other experts before publication, according to the American Heart Association.

Lifestyle interventions aimed at weight loss have come under scrutiny as a new generation of drugs help people lose weight. Some doctors have questioned the study’s findings, saying the findings could be biased by differences, such as underlying heart health conditions, between fasting patients and a control group whose members ate 12 to 16 hours a day. .

“Time-restricted eating is popular as a way to reduce calorie intake,” Keith Frayn, emeritus professor of human metabolism at the University of Oxford, said in a statement to the UK’s Science Media Centre. This work is important and shows that we need long-term research into the effects of this practice. But this abstract leaves many questions unanswered.”

Researchers led by Victor Zhong of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine analyzed data on about 20,000 adults from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The study looked at questionnaire answers and death data from 2003 to 2019. Because the study relied in part on a form that asked patients to recall what they ate over two days, scientists say there are potential inaccuracies. About half of the patients are male, and the average age is 48 years.

It’s unclear how long the patients’ intermittent fasting lasted, but researchers believe they continued this, Zhong said.

Fasting patients are more likely to be younger men with a higher body mass index and food insecurities, he said in an email. They also had lower rates of hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease based on self-report. “We controlled for all of these variables in our analyses, but the positive association between eight-hour time-restricted eating and cardiovascular mortality remained,” Zhong said.

The abstract was presented at the American Heart Association Lifestyle Sciences Conference in Chicago.

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