Some people seem to not just survive, but actually thrive on terrible, junk food diets, like the current president, or Warren Buffett (who eats ice cream and mcdonald's for breakfast and 2 liters of cherry coke every day, and is still alive at 95) https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-diet-2017-10

Diet really does seem to be one of those highly individualistic things, and I'm guessing humanity is in an evolutionary transition from paleolithic type diets to mcdonalds 3 times day, with different people having the genes to thrive on different things. You just have to see what works for you.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18714...

Survey took 15 years, and 19,831 participants. Median follow-up was 8.1 years. Further research is required.

Methods

Adult participants who reported usual intake from two valid 24-h dietary recalls were included from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2003–2018 (n = 19,831). Mortality status as of December 2019 was obtained through linkage to the National Death Index. Average eating duration was categorized as <8, 8–<10, 10–<12, 12–14 h (mean duration), >14–16, and >16 h. Multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) were derived.

Results

During a median follow-up of 8.1 years, compared with eating duration of 12–14 h, eating duration <8 h was robustly associated with higher cardiovascular mortality (HR, 2.35 [95 % CI, 1.39–3.98]), but not with all-cause and cancer mortality. The positive association with cardiovascular mortality remained consistent across 8 subgroups stratified by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic factors, and smoking status, and survived 14 sensitivity analyses. However, the association with all-cause mortality did not survive many sensitivity analyses.

Conclusions

Although a positive association was observed between eating duration <8 h and cardiovascular mortality, further research is required to understand whether this risk is attributed to the short eating duration itself or residual confounding resulting from its contributing factors.

It seems like there's a very plausible mechanism for reverse causation here. If you're already having health problems, you are more likely to follow a dietary pattern that is said to promote health. That this translates to a correlation to heightened cardiovascular risk seems unsurprising.

Not saying they are wrong, but my feeling is that selection effects probably dwarf any causal effects here. You don’t need much skew in the health distribution of people who are drawn to an intervention like this to get this kind of correlation and effect size.

I have not read the paper, but how did they differentiate between people eating non-breakfast food in the morning and people skipping breakfast?

From the quote below, it seems their method all but precise

> To understand their eating habits, participants were asked on two separate days - about two weeks apart - to recall everything they ate and drank. From these "dietary recalls", scientists estimated each person's average eating window and treated it as representative of their long-term routine.

I thought we gave up on IF a couple years ago when we determined it didn't help with weight and caused loss of muscle?

For me, the only effect of IF was insulin sensitivity so high I would fight passing out after a moderately carb rich dinner. I hated it and found no benefit.

So just a simple question - if I eat dinner at 6, then dont eat breakfast til 9 or 10 the next morning after waking up.. 6pm to 10am is 16 hours. What is so extreme about that? I do that most days without even thinking about it.

I feel no hunger after dinner, overnight or in the morning when I wake up. What exactly am I doing wrong according to this study? Im NOT hungry, therefor I dont eat. Later in the morning I feel hunger so I eat. 16-18 hours passes and I feel totally normal before my first food of the day. Do people really think this is actually an abnormally long time to not eat anything?

The quality of studies seems so poor it almost seems like the people conducting them don't even care about their quality, but wherever gets funding and keeps the bosses happy.

Basically the car salespeople of academia.

> They found the elevated cardiovascular risk was consistent across socioeconomic groups, and strongest among smokers and people with diabetes or existing heart disease - suggesting they should be especially cautious about long-term, narrow eating windows. The link held even after adjusting for diet quality, meal and snack frequency, and other lifestyle factors, researchers found.

Did they account for who was overweight? Cause it doesn't sound like it.

For what it's worth, it always felt unhealthy when I tried due to increased stress levels

"Eating duration <8 h was linked to 135 % higher cardiovascular mortality, but was not associated with all-cause and cancer mortality."

...

"Although a positive association was observed between eating duration <8 h and cardiovascular mortality, further research is required to understand whether this risk is attributed to the short eating duration itself or residual confounding resulting from its contributing factors."

I think I've seen a preprint of this study discussed a little while back. What some experts(?) were suggesting is to widen the window to something like 10 or 12 hours.

<8h feeding window, but “normal” eating habits are usually around 12hr feeding window. I find it very hard to believe that simply waiting an extra 4 hours to eat has any appreciable impact on health. Our bodies aren’t that fragile.

The food and drugs industry wants you fat.

> They found the elevated cardiovascular risk was consistent across socioeconomic groups, and strongest among smokers and people with diabetes or existing heart disease - suggesting they should be especially cautious about long-term, narrow eating windows. The link held even after adjusting for diet quality, meal and snack frequency, and other lifestyle factors, researchers found.

Smoking makes it easier to skip meals, which is part of why people gain weight when they quit. Smokers who more likely only ate in 8 hour windows may just be heavier smokers than those who ate across 14 hour windows if there is a dose response relationship to the meal skipping.

Diabetes also can make meals at certain times of day make you feel sick and more likely to be skipped (more examples beyond this, but look up dawn phenomenon with diabetes).

They say all cause mortality is not much different blbut those two subgroups had the higher mortality compare with same subgroup that ate over a longer period. But it could just be heavier smokers skipping meals and more advanced diabetes case sufferers skipping breakfast unless controlled for separately (smoking amount and dawn phenomenon)

I find it interesting that there is this sentiment that humans have forgotten to listen to their bodies and at the same time there is this other sentiment that you shouldn't trust your body.

What I mean: I have Morbus Meulengracht and my metabolism definitely works differently than that of other people.

I follow my body. If I have hunger at 10pm, I eat something...

All my blood values, apart from Bilirubin (of course) and Cholesterin are absolutely superb

I'd suggest that only people who are already overweight will be trying intermittent fasting. Needs a study with randomly selected people who are put into two groups - overweight and lean, then half of each group start intermittent fasting.

Also, since when is just restricting eating to certain hours of the day 'fasting'?

My experience: I was overweight, 95 Kg. Two years of not getting anywhere with attempting to reduce intake, due to living alone, which makes cooking small meals difficult. Heard of "36 hour fasting", and decided to try it. Except I felt '36 hours' is half-arsed. So to simplify I just do 48 hour fasts. Turns out it's very easy, and I can reliably drop a couple more kilos anytime I choose to do another fast or two. Currently down to 84 Kg. Will be 83 after the current one probably. Once I'm at 80kg, I'll decide whether to continue down to 75 or so.

What isn't IF correlated to at this point?

Correlation vs Causation.

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luckly junk food will keep us healthy /s

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Do yourself a favor, and just take GLP1s instead (after talking to your health care professional). The research on the effects is plentiful, they're incredibly effective, and next year by next year you'll have very effective FDA approved (for weight loss) oral GLP1s to take.

Losing weight is almost solved at this point, I'd post links but at this point the substack I run is heavily paywalled -- the research is out there and not hard to find with a quick search.