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I hope you all have an excellent week. With Easter around the corner, many of us will have a few days ahead where the usual meal plan will undergo some changes, with the intrusion of chocolates and other typical foods of this season. As long as it's done in a controlled manner and in a relaxed environment, with our families, we should all enjoy it. This week, we will precisely talk about nutrition. You probably have come across news over the past few days referring to a recent large-scale study, which claims that time-restricted eating (specifically in the 16-hour fasting + 8-hour feeding window scheme) increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 91%.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/03/18/intermittent-fasting-time-restricted-eating/ https://newsroom.heart.org/news/8-hour-time-restricted-eating-linked-to-a-91-higher-risk-of-cardiovascular-death
As is natural, both due to the fact that it is a dieting method that has become quite famous in recent years and the magnitude of the results, the discussion has been intense. In our project, we always try to see the multiple sides of an issue, and nutrition is no exception to this pattern. Time-restricted eating has several benefits that can be understood through numerous studies. Both in terms of weight loss and in terms of controlling manifestations of neurological pathologies, such as epilepsy, for example. It has also shown, on one hand, potential benefits in terms of longevity, through the optimization of mitochondrial health; but on the other hand, it may also have some deleterious effects, due to the fact that, in some cases, it limits the daily intake of protein which, in the long term, could have negative effects on that same longevity. In the case of the referenced study, several questions arise: are the subjects of the study under the same level of stress? how accurate is the information each of them submitted regarding what they actually ingested? why wasn't their family history of cardiovascular disease taken into account?
In addition to those questions (and many more), this, like many other studies related to longevity, suffers from a central problem: it will require an active assessment over a much longer period of time to draw more robust conclusions.
This study once again reinforces our opinion that everything must be evaluated critically and that, definitely, there is no ideal regimen in nutrition as in other central topics in health and performance, and that each individual must be aware of what goals they want to achieve, so that the best way to achieve them can be chosen. That's where Prime Human Performance will help you.
Happy Easter! João Pedro Neto, MD
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