Wellness Wednesday is sponsored by Intermountain Health.
In March you may have noticed a slew of headlines saying a common diet practice could increase the risk of death from heart disease.
Intermittent fasting is the practice of not eating on a schedule. Sometimes it’s one day a week. Sometimes 16 hours of every 24.
The study that led to all the headlines has a lot of the nation’s leading experts annoyed. One of those experts is Dr. Benjamin Horne, a research professor for Intermountain Health.
Horne said, “Utah has one of the lowest coronary heart disease death rates in the United States.”
Dr. Horne’s interested in intermittent fasting goes back 20 years. It’s a topic that found him as he looked for reasons Utahns had healthy hearts. His first thought…Utah has the nation’s lowest rate of smoking.
“Well, California passed a smoking law in the early 90s. And they’re the second lowest smoking rate in the United States. But their heart disease death rate is middle of the road,” said Horne. “We thought alcohol. We thought diet, we thought…attending church more or less frequently."
The picture was incomplete, so Horne created an extensive survey that included a question about fasting.
“Independent of smoking status and independent of alcohol, people who said they routinely fasted for an extended period of time, had a much lower…about 40% lower rate of coronary artery disease,” said Horne.
Utah’s population allowed them a good sample group to survey.
“So because we have in Utah, a large proportion of the population that fasts on a routine basis, on a monthly basis, for religious purposes, it was something that we could do here,” said Horne.
The first study was published in 2007. They repeated it with different patients in 2012 and confirmed the results.
“From that, we started doing some randomized trials asking people who had never fasted before, would you please fast? Water only for 24 hours,” said Horne.
For their tests they looked at indicators known to predict coronary and kidney health. Blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, insulin resistance. A relatively mild fasting regimen improved all of them. It provided specific evidence for Horne’s earlier broad studies.
“That’s one of the reasons I was annoyed by these recent studies, we found that people who are routinely fasting had a lower risk of death,” said Horne.
Turns out, all the recent headlines were from a conference presentation. The researchers took public survey answers about when people said they ate over one 48-hour period. They found people who reported eating within an 8-hour window each day. Were any of them choosing to fast? There’s no way to know.
Bottom line, Dr. Horne said, “If you're doing time restricted eating or some other intermittent fasting regimen, you should not change your practice because of the study.”
In fact, Dr. Horne’s team has pioneered much of this scientific research, and he’s not alone. Other studies have confirmed what he’s found. Intermittent fasting is generally considered healthy. Though, you should be careful with any approach to diet. The important thing is to pay attention to your body and take any concerns to your doctor.
