United States: New research suggests that timing may help with weight loss from fat, compared to muscle, and improving glycemia or blood sugar control in individuals with prediabetes and diabetes.
More about the study
It is a type of time restricted eating, which does nothing else but follow a diet plan, where eating is done during a particular span of the day and remains at fasting for the remaining time.
Scientists tested TRE on those individuals with a syndrome called metabolic syndrome, meaning, they are at risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease because they suffer from some of the following risk factors: gaining excessive weight, uncontrolled diabetes, high blood pressure, or unhealthy cholesterol levels.
The CDC reported that 11.6 percent of the U.S. population have Type 2 diabetes, and about 38 percent have prediabetes. Heart diseases are the number one killer globally.
According to Dr. Pam Taub, the study co-author and cardiologist at the University of California, San Diego, “Patients with metabolic syndrome or prediabetes represent a third of the U.S. population and have few treatment options to prevent progression to Type 2 diabetes,” newsweek.com reported.
Moreover, “These patients are at high risk for developing Type 2 diabetes and future cardiovascular disease,” Taub added.
She added, “Our research demonstrates that intervening with a lifestyle intervention like time-restricted eating at this important time point for patients with metabolic syndrome or prediabetes can have a meaningful impact on the trajectory of their overall health and reduce the risk of future Type 2 diabetes.”
More about the time-restricted eating
The concept of time-restricted eating is when a person eats a late breakfast and an early dinner or has one of the two meals to lengthen the overnight fasting period and give the digestive system a break.
In this study, 108 participants were split into two groups: half of them got information about healthy nutrition and were encouraged to eat as they normally would; the other half received the same information but were limited in terms of the number of hours they could eat, and these varied between eight and 10 hours at most.
According to Taub, “Humans are not designed to eat food around the clock, and it is important to give our bodies a period of metabolic rest, just like we need an adequate amount of sleep to be able to perform well,” newsweek.com reported.
“In the U.S., the average eating window is 14 hours, and many people are eating food until they sleep,” and “TRE may not be for everyone—e.g., there are no studies in patients with Type 1 diabetes—but I recommend [that] all my patients avoid late night eating.”