A study out of China got a lot of attention this week because it suggests that people who practice intermittent fasting are more likely to die of heart disease. Only, the study admits that it did not account for the health of participants. What?
The study claims that “people who limited their eating across less than 8 hours per day, a time-restricted eating plan, were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease compared to people who ate across 12-16 hours per day.” Yet it also says that “factors that may also play a role in health, outside of the daily duration of eating and cause of death, were not included in the analysis.”
This is a clear problem. One would think that people who participate in fasting are likely to be doing so to control weight and other pre-existing morbidities. Other likely causes of death are kinda of important here and yet the press ran with this headline.
Science journalist Matthew Harper says that this study is “weak” and that you “shouldn’t be wasting brain glucose thinking about it.”
