Time-Restricted Eating

Satchin Panda with Salk Institute for Biological Studies and UCSD, along with Pam Taub, Associate Professor of Medicine, UCSD, composed information on whether or not  time-restricted eating could help you lose weight. Their article was published in Live.

Anyone having obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure or high cholesterol are advised to eat less and move a lot more.  There is now new research with another simple tool to fight these diseases off. The tool is restricting your eating time to a daily 10-hour window.  

Some studies done with mice and fruit flies suggest that limiting when the animals eat to a daily window of 10 hours can prevent, or even reverse, the metabolic diseases that are affecting millions of people in the U.S.  

One author is a cell biologist and the other a cardiologist who are exploring the effects of the timing of nutrition on health. Their results of the flies and mice led them to test the idea of the time-restricted eating (TRE).  After studies lasted more than a year they showed TRE was safe among the healthy people. Then they tested the time-restricted eating in patients that had conditions known as metabolic syndrome.  They wanted to know if this approach could help millions of patients who suffer from early signs of diabetes since it had a profound impact on the lab rats with these conditions.

It’s difficult counting calories or trying to calculate just how much fat, carbohydrates and protein you are getting in every meal.  The TRE provides a new strategy for fighting obesity and metabolic diseases affecting millions of people worldwide. TRE is actually a lifestyle choice that healthy people can adopt to reduce their risk for future metabolic diseases.

Patients were recruited from UC San Diego clinics meeting 3 out of 5 criteria for metabolic syndrome, such as obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high level of bad cholesterol and low level of good cholesterol.  They used an app called myCircadianClock to log every calorie consumed for two weeks. This indicated those who were more likely to spread their eating out over 14 hours or more and might benefit from the 10-hour TRE. Their physical activity and sleep were monitored.  Nineteen patients qualified for the study and used this app for 12 weeks with continuous monitoring.  

After 12 weeks they returned to the clinic and had a complete medical examination and blood tests.  Results of the test were published in Cell Metabolism and pleasantly surprising. Most lost a modest amount of body weight.  Those with high blood glucose levels when fasting also had reduced blood sugar levels.  

Time-restricted eating is not currently a standard recommendation from doctors.  No patients went through dangerously low levels of glucose during the fasting but TRE should be practiced under medical supervision.

Dr Fredda Branyon