Is intermittent fasting going to kill you? 😱 This week on overreaction theater we have a new abstract that was published at the AHA conference which concluded that IF raised the risk of death from heart disease by 91%. This got a TON of press. So what do I think? Well this is an abstract at a conference, it has not gone through peer review, there is no full text & I can’t read the detailed methods & results so I can’t comment too much but I’ll give a few thoughts now & in a few months I’ll circle back once it’s published This was a cohort study based off NHANES data from 2003 to 2018 comparing people who ate inside of an 8 hour feeding window vs those that ate in a feeding window greater than 8 hours & found those eating inside the window had a 91% greater risk of death from CVD This study used food recall data which is standard for these studies but does have its own limitations. Further, IF didn’t gain popularity til after 2010. It’s very likely that many of the people surveyed in this study were not purposefully following an IF protocol. They just likely skipped meals like breakfast which placed them inside that window. Other studies have shown skipping breakfast increases risk of CVD & mortality (PMID: 32085933) But this is less likely to be a function of skipping breakfast or meals causing CVD than it is that people with poor meal habits are more likely to skip meals & have overall poorer diet quality (PMID: 32398192) & has been associated with greater BMI (PMID: 38479908) But the HUMAN RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIALS where IF is used as a way to reduce calorie intake demonstrate improvements in risk factors for CVD (PMID: 38425626) so I highly doubt there is something unique to IF that causes CVD. I think this is probably explained by confounding variables but I’ll have to wait til the full text is published to comment more Overall, IF can be an effective way to reduce calories & improve metabolic health through loss of body fat but it is NOT uniquely beneficial to health compared to calorie equated non-IF protocols. It has been promoted as a pro longevity tool but there is also NO real data to support IF as uniquely beneficial for longevity Share👊