Intermittent Fasting Poses Serious Risk To Heart Health? Know Key Points From A Study

Often touted as an excellent eating pattern to manage weight and boost heart health, time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting had gained popularity among fitness enthusiasts. However, in a recent study, researchers observed that people who ate all their food in less than 8 hours in one day were 91% more likely to die from heart problems.

Is intermittent fasting bad for health? (Image by Freepik)

For quite some time now, fitness enthusiasts have been swearing by intermittent fasting for its numerous health benefits - from its beneficial effects on metabolism, and weight loss to even controlling high blood pressure and aiding heart health. With almost every fitness influencer and fitness enthusiast vouching for this fasting method, including several celebrities, intermittent fasting became a common fitness tool. So it came as a great shock when at the Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions 2024, held from March 18- 21 in Chicago, the American Heart Association announced that their study has found that adults following an eight-hour time-restricted eating schedule have a 91% higher chance of death by cardiovascular disease than those eating within the regular timeframe of 12-16 hours per day.

According to news reports, senior study author Victor Wenze Zhong, a professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, China, said that while restricting daily eating time to a short period, such as 8 hours per day, has gained popularity in recent years to lose weight and improve heart health, "the long-term health effects of time-restricted eating, including the risk of death from any cause or cardiovascular disease, are unknown."

Intermittent Fasting: A Red Flag For The Heart? What Study Says

Check out the highlights of the research which studied over 20,000 adults with an average age of 49 years:

1. People who followed the routine where they ate all of their food in 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. In those people who already suffer from cardiovascular diseases, 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,” Zhong said.

Intermittent Fasting Impact: More Research Is Required

Senior study author Victor Wenze Zhong emphasised, "Although the study identified an association between an 8-hour eating window and cardiovascular death, this does not mean that time-restricted eating caused cardiovascular death.” For this research, the American Heart Association studied approximately 20,000 adults in the US from 2003 to 2018 using data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for its National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The study has its limitations and researchers noted that future studies may examine the biological mechanisms that underly the associations between a time-restricted eating schedule and adverse cardiovascular outcomes, and whether these findings are similar for people living in other parts of the world, the authors noted.