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Factors that may also play a role in health, outside of daily duration of eating and cause of death, were not included in the analysis.

So could be that people with higher risk already had higher risk before changing their eating. Sounds likely since IF is frequently used as a diet. Limitations they mentioned also included self-reported data, which is notoriously bad when it comes to diet.

Honestly, it sounds like it's not a very useful study. So don't get too depressed on account of this.

Important to note that this is preliminary research
It is interesting though. My hunch is that people who follow time restrictive diets tend to fall into a higher risk category to begin with. For instance because they were already overweight

This shouldn't be taken seriously. It's a very quick and dirty analysis presented at a conference without peer review. Start worrying when/if the scientific paper comes out, which might be years or never.

Sounds like this "study" (aka a self-reported, retrospective, epidemiological survey - which is a type of statistics that I think just confuses the public to call a study but whatever) needs a lot more work to say anything with certainty. The kicker in the article is this I think:

"...the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake." Yikes. That, and it sounds like they didn't control for any of the possible confounding variables such as nutrient intake, demographics, weight, stress, or basically any other risk factors or possible explanations. Its entirely possible that once they actually control for this stuff, the correlation could shrink to almost nothing or even reverse when we see that people who tried this diet were just baseline higher risk than who didn't.

I do 16:8 IF. It’s the best and easiest way I’ve lost weight AND maintained it. I can’t imagine how eating less (and not starving yourself) and carrying less weight around can be worse for your health than eating throughout the course of the day.

The study’s limitations included its reliance on self-reported dietary information, which may be affected by participant’s memory or recall and may not accurately assess typical eating patterns. Factors that may also play a role in health, outside of daily duration of eating and cause of death, were not included in the analysis.

This definitely needs better methods of study, and peer reviews of course. Not sure if the study covered what participants were actually eating, because I would guess that would be the main factor.

The article itself quotes another doctor saying:

“However, the long-term health effects of time-restricted eating, including risk of death from any cause or cardiovascular disease, are unknown.”

I hope this study is proven wrong as IF has been the one “diet” plan I was actually able to do and keep doing.

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.

This is odd. 10 hours is for example breakfast at 10AM and dinner by 8PM which to me sounds like a typical eating pattern. Suspicious.

Theres a big difference between time restricted eating and disordered eating. I wonder if the study lumps them together. An example is somone who follows the same schedule every day, breakfast at noon, dinner at 8 is doing IF. Someone who eats too much monday then compensates by only eating for four hours on Tuesday and Wednesday is more like a case of disordered eating.

Id wager with how new IF is and the fact that the impetuous to start fasting rarely comes from doctors, that a lot of people aren't doing IF in the most healthy way. My doctor approves of it for me since we do have data showing its good for blood glucose and people at risk of diabetes.

People who attempt diets have elevated risk of cardiovascular death

☝️A more accurate title based on the discussion in this thread.

This is so obviously confounded. If I told you that people who use asthma inhalers have a 91% higher risk of dying of asthma, would you conclude that it was the inhalers killing them?

I'm OMAD weekdays, then two meals a day weekends. I don't want to return to what I was before. I get so tired during the day after I eat a breakfast or lunch and was much more happier and energetic when I tried IF.

I have a feeling this study will turn out like every study done on coffee. Every other year coffee is either great or bad for your health. Next year, we may hear something different from IF, but this one does make be think twice.

It's an interesting correlation, but it's still based on self-reported data in an epidemiological study. What were those people eating? What was their activity level? What time of day were they eating? How did their overall calorie intake compare to non-IF diets?

I didn't read the original paper, just this linked article, but it doesn't sound like those factors were considered. There is definitely a lot more work needed to establish a causal relationship.

The Plant Based Morning Show did a podcast on it this morning. It starts at about 23 minutes in. I haven't listened to it yet but if anyone is interested in more discussion on it you can get some there.

So give us the dataset then, researchers.