Time-restricted eating may be tied to higher cardiovascular death risk, finds study

Time-restricted eating, a type of intermittent fasting, involves limiting the hours for eating to a specific number of hours each day, which may range from a 4- to 12-hour time window in 24 hours. Many people who follow a time-restricted eating diet follow a 16:8 eating schedule, where they eat all their foods in an 8-hour window and fast for the remaining 16 hours each day. Previous research has found that time-restricted eating improves several cardiometabolic health measures, such as blood pressure, blood glucose, and cholesterol levels.

“Restricting daily eating time to a short period, such as 8 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 the risk of death from any cause or cardiovascular disease, are unknown,” said senior study author Victor Wenze Zhong, Ph.D., a professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, China.

In this study, researchers investigated the potential long-term health impact of following an 8-hour time-restricted eating plan. They reviewed information about dietary patterns for participants in the annual 2003-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) in comparison to data about people who died from 2003 through December 2019, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Death Index database.

The analysis revealed the following:

1.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.

2.The increased risk of cardiovascular death was also seen in people living with heart disease or cancer.

3.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.

4.Time-restricted eating did not reduce the overall risk of death from any cause.

5.An eating duration of more than 16 hours per day was associated with a lower risk of cancer mortality among people with cancer.

“We were surprised to find that people who followed an 8-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 12-16 hours per day, a shorter eating duration was not associated with living longer,” said Zhong.