Intermittent fasting has been around since our earliest ancestors for the obvious reasons that they couldn’t find a convenient supermarket. Of course I’m being sarcastic since the modern supermarket, Piggly Wiggly only opened 100 years ago. Life was rough for our ancestors based on their ability to find or grow food. It was tougher for them during the winters when food was scarce. So, when I saw this headline from USA Today, “We were surprised: Intermittent Fasting Flagged as Serious Health Risk.” I was surprised too.
Reading on, I discovered that on March 18, 2024, the American Heart Association made the claim that intermittent fasting is a serious health risk. This was a result of a study, claiming the results as preliminary findings by the senior study author Victor Wenze Zhong. Victor Zhong sits at the chair of the Shanghai Jio Tong University of Medicine, department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. He stated that the findings of this study showed that by adults restricting their eating to an eight-hour window have a 91% higher chance of developing cardiovascular disease and death than the usual eating window of 12-16 hours per day. It does seem he backtracked a little bit by saying, “Although, the study identified an association between an eight-hour eating window and cardiovascular death, this does not mean that time-restricted eating caused cardiovascular death.”
There is a saying by doctors that “correlation does not imply causation”. This means that there is an inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables based solely on an observed association. The surprising part was that the American Heart Association jumped on it.
Zhong and his researchers conducted the independent study involving 20,000 adults in the United States over a period of fifteen years. I am not sure why a Chinese university would be researching American individuals and not Chinese, but let’s continue. This data was collected in a National Health and Nutrition Examination survey by our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The average age of these adults was 49 years old. They tracked their dietary patterns who only tracked their food intake for at least two days within one year. TWO DAYS WITHIN ONE YEAR?. By questions would be “Have these researchers even have the 20 hours of nutritional classes to become doctors?”. Maybe it’s not required in China. The researchers compare the association between the dietary patterns of the survey against the CD mortality data from the same time frame.
The study participants “self-identified” as:
• Over 50% women
• Over 73% white Caucasian adults (non-Hispanic)
• 8% were Afro Americans
• 6.9% were identified as other
The American Heart Association published the details of the finding showing that:
• Adults restricting their eating to an eight-hour window have a 91% higher chance of developing cardiovascular disease and death.
• For those people living with heart disease or cancer, they had an increased risk of cardiovascular death.
• Adults who only restricted their eating between an eight-hour and ten-hour window, the chance of developing cardiovascular disease and death dropped to 66%.
• The overall risk of death from any cause was not decreased by intermittent fasting.
• A lower risk of cancer mortality was shown for those people who had cancer and had a eating window of sixteen hours or more per day.
There are plenty of reasons other than diet that can affect the overall health of an individual and it seems that they were not taken into account in this study. The American Heart Association reported” (We) seek to further research and examine the biological mechanisms that underly the associations between a time-restricted eating schedule and adverse cardiovascular outcomes.”
If that is the case, then why run with this story. Clinical doctors have had patients that showed that intermittent fasting, along with reducing their carbohydrates, can improve blood glucose, insulin resistance, and blood pressure.
My personal opinion is that conducting a study with people at an average age of 49 opens the study up to a variety of other issues like, “Did the person smoke tobacco, marijuana or any other drug? Any drug or alcohol use? Were they active in their lifestyles? And the questions go on and on. Not a whole lot of people live their lives exactly alike or in the same region. I remember the second stage smog alerts growing up in Los Angeles in the 80s. All these factors are contributors to a person’s life expectancy.
You should consult a doctor before you consider changing your diet or exercise. I also encourage you to read and do your own research. Health is important but now as important as the knowledge to do things correctly.
The original article can be found at https://www.yahoo.com/news/were-surprised-intermittent-fasting-flagged-234613115.html
