Intermittent fasting
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8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death
CHICAGO, March 18, 2024 — An analysis of over 20,000 U.S. adults found that people who limited their eating across less than 8 hours per day, a time-restricted eating plan, were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease compared to people who ate across 12-16 hours per day, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention│Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions 2024, March 18- 21, in Chicago. The meeting offers the latest science on population-based health and wellness and implications for lifestyle.
The analysis found:
- People who followed a pattern of eating all of their food across less than 8 hours per day had a 91% higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease.
- The increased risk of cardiovascular death was also seen in people living with heart disease or cancer.
- Among people with existing cardiovascular disease, an eating duration of no less than 8 but less than 10 hours per day was also associated with a 66% higher risk of death from heart disease or stroke.
- Time-restricted eating did not reduce the overall risk of death from any cause.
- An eating duration of more than 16 hours per day was associated with a lower risk of cancer mortality among people with cancer.
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An "analysis" from someone not too worried about the study.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/19/intermittent-fasting-study-heart-risk/
The study is a type of nutritional research that is notoriously weak, and right now it’s only available as a press release. It’s not clear from the many, many news articles on the study whether reporters actually viewed the data that will be presented at an upcoming research meeting held by the American Heart Association.
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“While informative, this study should be considered exploratory,” said Harlan Krumholz, a leading expert in the science of improving health policy at Yale. “We are still learning about how people can optimize their diets, and this study is more of a call for more research than something that should frighten people who find restricted eating a useful strategy.”
My own takeaway is that the study does mean that daily caloric restriction should be studied more — but we knew that. I don’t think it tells us anything else about these diets; it just illustrates how much we don’t know about biology. Some articles posited that maybe dieting this way leads to more loss of muscle mass. Sure, maybe.
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There is evidence, good evidence, iirc, that caloric restriction (at least in animal studies) adds to longevity.
One point that I've made in the past is that the "calories in" should equal "calories out" theory is false on its face.
It's not what you eat. It's not what you "burn." It's what you absorb and keep. Now, how modifiable is that? I don't know.
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Yup - agree. If your stomach doesn't process the calories - i.e. eat a piece of coal, it won't impact weight. A food's caloric value by itself provides a bit of information, but we don't always process all of the calories and how they are processed makes a difference - .e.g. glycemic index and glycemic load.
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@George-K said in Intermittent fasting:
There is evidence, good evidence, iirc, that caloric restriction (at least in animal studies) adds to longevity.
True but from what I understand you'd have to do something like "eat nothing for two weeks" repeatedly to do something that corresponds to the animal studies. It's very different from 16/8 time-restricted eating.
One point that I've made in the past is that the "calories in" should equal "calories out" theory is false on its face.
It's not what you eat. It's not what you "burn." It's what you absorb and keep. Now, how modifiable is that? I don't know.
From what I understand, the idea of what you can absorb is already built into the notion of calorie as it is used in nutrition. A gram of plutonium has zero calories, from what I understand, even though there's of course a lot of potential energy in it.
I think "calories in, calories out" is accurate enough for all practical purposes. If you eat less calories than you consume in a day, you will loose weight 100% of the time.
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@George-K said in Intermittent fasting:
There is evidence, good evidence, iirc, that caloric restriction (at least in animal studies) adds to longevity.
I remember reading about a guy (or group) that were following a near starvation diet assuming they would live longer (based on mouse studies where near starvation increased the mouse lifespan). It was a while ago so I wonder how he is doing.
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@Klaus said in Intermittent fasting:
I think "calories in, calories out" is accurate enough for all practical purposes. If you eat less calories than you consume in a day, you will loose weight 100% of the time.
It's not what you consume, it's what you utilize. If your body were 100% efficient, that's the case. Your body's caloric utilization varies based on its needs. If you have a fever of 40 degrees, your metabolic rate is about 15% higher than at 37 degrees. Keep that up and you will lose weight if your caloric intake is constant.
As you, I believe, indicated, you lose weight with exercise not because you "burn calories" when you exercise - your body adjusts its utilization of the calories you already are taking in.
There is the "plateau" phenomenon, in which a person on a restricted-calorie diet slows, or stops losing weight despite a constant intake. That's the body becoming more efficient in absorbing calories and adjusting metabolic rate to maintain weight.
If it were as simple as a scale which you could balance, people would have no problem losing weight.
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@George-K said in Intermittent fasting:
It's not what you consume, it's what you utilize. If your body were 100% efficient, that's the case. Your body's caloric utilization varies based on its needs. If you have a fever of 40 degrees, your metabolic rate is about 15% higher than at 37 degrees. Keep that up and you will lose weight if your caloric intake is constant.
As you, I believe, indicated, you lose weight with exercise not because you "burn calories" when you exercise - your body adjusts its utilization of the calories you already are taking in.
That's not how I understand "calories in, calories out". The calories you consume include your metabolic base rate, and the MBR is of course not constant. So, the "calories out" part includes everything that consumes calories: MBR, the energy it takes to process the food, the energy required to think, the energy required to move.
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I think what George is saying is that there are unprocessed calories in the "calories out" part of the equation (presumably in the poop)
Person A may have fewer undigested calories vs. Person B given the exact same "calories in". Or some types of calories increase the amount of unprocessed food for all Persons.