Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon 8 Cancel Play now Health expert Dr Michael Mosley has responded to claims that intermittent fasting, a popular weight loss method, could be harmful for your heart. This type of eating plan, which involves having meals only during certain hours of the day, is the basis for many well-known diets, including Dr Mosley's own 5:2 and Fast 800 plans. The 16:8 diet, where you eat all your food in an eight-hour window and fast for the remaining 16 hours, has been followed by celebrities like
Jennifer Aniston and Heidi Klum. However, a study of 20,000 US adults who were on intermittent fasting, most of whom used the 16:8 schedule, found it wasn't a good long-term health choice. The author of Just One Thing was "shocked and surprised" to learn of the study, which suggests that intermittent fasting could raise heart attack risks. He added that he found many "problems" when trying to make sense of its results. Mr Mosley said the study has not swayed him (Image: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images) Writing for Mail Online, he said: "A review of all the best research, published in the New
England Journal of Medicine in 2019, concluded that 'intermittent fasting has broad-spectrum benefits for many health conditions, such as obesity, diabetemellitus [type 2 diabetes], cardiovascular disease, cancers, and neurologic disorders [such as dementia]'." The study, published in the
American Heart Association Journal last week, discovered that those who limited their eating to eight hours a day were 91 per cent more likely to die from heart disease than those who ate over 12 or 16 hours. Researchers analysed data from over 20,000 adults in the US, with an average age of 49, over a period of eight years. Top Health Stories Today Worst foods to eat before flying Experts warn of viral ear-cleaning trend Weight loss injections explained Red flag
cancer symptom after eating For people already living with heart disease, eating for more than eight but less than 10 hours a day was linked to a 66 per cent higher risk of death from heart disease or stroke. Time-restricted eating did not lower the risk of death from any cause. Dr Mosley mentioned: "There are lots of problems with trying to make sense of this [the new study from China], not least because we don't know how old the participants were, how healthy they were, whether their recall was accurate and, importantly, whether those two days were representative of what they did the rest of the week." A form of fasting has been linked to heart disease in new research (Image: Getty Images) He quoted Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University who said: "to relate those patterns to a deliberate long-term time-restricted eating intervention seems to be going far beyond the data". Lastly, Dr Mosley suggested that the people who told the study they only ate during eight hours of the day might have been shift workers, who have a higher risk of heart disease. He pointed out that the study didn't consider what food they ate in those eight hours. Top Trending Stories Today
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Women Dr Mosley shared his overall thoughts of the study, but his faith in intermittent fasting remains the same, as it "has not been shaken by this abstract." He also pointed out that recent findings suggest eating earlier in the day is more beneficial if you're limiting when you eat. He cited a study published in the journal Nature Communications involving 100,000 adults, which found that having breakfast before 8am and not eating 12-13 hours later made for "the biggest improvements" in heart disease risks. Eating after 9pm was linked to a 13 per cent increased risk of heart disease. While Mr Mosely does not agree with the most recent study, its authors were also "surprised" by its results. Lead author Dr Victor Wenze Zhong, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in
China, previously said: "Restricting daily eating time to a short period, such as eight hours per day, has gained popularity in recent years as a way to lose weight and improve heart health. However, the long-term health effects of time-restricted eating, including risk of death from cardiovascular disease or any other cause, are unknown." "We were surprised to find in our study that people who followed an eight-hour, time-restricted eating schedule were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease. Even though this type of diet has been popular due to its potential short-term benefits, our research clearly shows that, compared with a typical eating time range of 12 to 16 hours per day, it may have long-term drawbacks. A shorter eating duration was not associated with living longer." Dr Zhong stressed that the study does not prove that time-restricted eating causes heart disease deaths, while Dr Christopher Gardner, a professor at Stanford University in the US, pointed out that the researchers relied on people to accurately report how long they spent eating each day. "This may be affected by participants' memory or recall, and therefore may not accurately assess typical eating patterns," he said. Top Life
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