this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
119 points (81.8% liked)

News

31548 readers
4388 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As a big fan of IF, I find this really depressing.

all 40 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 81 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Factors that may also play a role in health, outside of daily duration of eating and cause of death, were not included in the analysis.

So could be that people with higher risk already had higher risk before changing their eating. Sounds likely since IF is frequently used as a diet. Limitations they mentioned also included self-reported data, which is notoriously bad when it comes to diet.

Honestly, it sounds like it's not a very useful study. So don't get too depressed on account of this.

[–] gregorum@lemm.ee 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That sounds like a plausible explanation, but there’s no way to know because there’s no data. As you said, this study is kinda useless.

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Not useless, this correlation was totally unexpected, they were expecting to see a benefit. It's not definitive though, but retrospective reviews like this are important first steps even though they carry many caveats. Now this data could be used as justification for funding and grants for further prospective studies into this to better quantify risks and benefits of intermittent fasting.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

So could be that people with higher risk already had higher risk before changing their eating. Sounds likely since IF is frequently used as a diet.

I like this explanation.

[–] witty_username@feddit.nl 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Important to note that this is preliminary research
It is interesting though. My hunch is that people who follow time restrictive diets tend to fall into a higher risk category to begin with. For instance because they were already overweight

[–] cybervseas@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I also wonder if their nutrient density or food choices differ from the non-time restricted participants.

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Overweight people who are attempting to diet are more likely to have diseases linked to being overweight than average.

Truly a groundbreaking and shocking study! /s

[–] Paraponera_clavata@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This shouldn't be taken seriously. It's a very quick and dirty analysis presented at a conference without peer review. Start worrying when/if the scientific paper comes out, which might be years or never.

[–] Lmaydev@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't matter if it's peer reviewed. There isn't enough data to establish causality.

Chances are people who do those sorts of diets are already at risk. That's the super important data points we don't have.

So even if their peers confirm the data is accurate and their analysis is accurate it doesn't mean anything without further study.

[–] ArtVandelay@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yep, I don't see any way they could prove statistical significance as they could not reject the null hypothesis.

[–] JoBo@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Peer review is unfortunately not a magic bullet. And conference abstracts do get a form of peer review because that's how they get accepted for the conference.

The actual problem is that academics can pad their CVs doing terrible research and publishing it with alarmist headlines.

When they've written it up, it will get through peer review, somewhere, somehow, because peer review does not work. The fight will happen in the letters pages (if anyone has the energy) and won't change a damn thing anyway.

[–] Paraponera_clavata@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Presentations don't get peer review, at least not in biology (my field). I agree that peer review is totally broken though.

[–] JoBo@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't say they did. But authors don't just get to submit an abstract and have it accepted, it has been selected by whatever committee process was set up to sift the submissions. Many conferences will do a better job than the journals but mileage varies all over the fucking shop.

But my main bugbear here is the idea that peer review means anything. The dross that gets published is beyond depressing. But it's probably worth noting that dross is much less likely to get submitted to a conference because a) fuck all CV points for an abstract and b) getting accepted means registering for the conference and turning up to get your peer review in person. Scammers don't do that. Although there have been entire scam conferences so ... heuristics don't work any which way, really.

[–] Paraponera_clavata@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been to 30 or so national or international conferences in biology, and have never had an abstract rejected. I don't think I'm doing anything special, so I assume pretty much everyone gets in. More presenters = more money. I've also been on the selection committee side and it is definitely not more selective than peer review. We're only reviewing an abstract, usually under 100 words. Prob varies by field though. Maybe medical conferences are selective?

[–] JoBo@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

You can't generalise about conferences any more than you can generalise about individual journals, or publishers, or peer review.

Lack of peer review is not a standalone criticism. The problems with this study are obvious and you do not need to rely on an imaginary peer reviewer to point them out.

[–] khepri@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sounds like this "study" (aka a self-reported, retrospective, epidemiological survey - which is a type of statistics that I think just confuses the public to call a study but whatever) needs a lot more work to say anything with certainty. The kicker in the article is this I think:

"...the different windows of time-restricted eating was determined on the basis of just two days of dietary intake." Yikes. That, and it sounds like they didn't control for any of the possible confounding variables such as nutrient intake, demographics, weight, stress, or basically any other risk factors or possible explanations. Its entirely possible that once they actually control for this stuff, the correlation could shrink to almost nothing or even reverse when we see that people who tried this diet were just baseline higher risk than who didn't.

[–] JudahBenHur@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

I dont care about IF, but yep.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Among people with existing cardiovascular disease, an eating duration of no less than 8 but less than 10 hours per day was also associated with a 66% higher risk of death from heart disease or stroke.

This is odd. 10 hours is for example breakfast at 10AM and dinner by 8PM which to me sounds like a typical eating pattern. Suspicious.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

"Living determined to be the leading cause of dying."

[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago
[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Theres a big difference between time restricted eating and disordered eating. I wonder if the study lumps them together. An example is somone who follows the same schedule every day, breakfast at noon, dinner at 8 is doing IF. Someone who eats too much monday then compensates by only eating for four hours on Tuesday and Wednesday is more like a case of disordered eating.

Id wager with how new IF is and the fact that the impetuous to start fasting rarely comes from doctors, that a lot of people aren't doing IF in the most healthy way. My doctor approves of it for me since we do have data showing its good for blood glucose and people at risk of diabetes.

[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The link says that the study participants were 20,000 adults intermittently fasting with the 8 hour schedule.

They also said it was self reported so the person I describe easily fits into that category. Their binge days could also be during a time restricted window and it would still be disordered eating.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People who attempt diets have elevated risk of cardiovascular death

☝️A more accurate title based on the discussion in this thread.

[–] JoBo@feddit.uk 6 points 1 year ago

This is so obviously confounded. If I told you that people who use asthma inhalers have a 91% higher risk of dying of asthma, would you conclude that it was the inhalers killing them?

[–] MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I'm OMAD weekdays, then two meals a day weekends. I don't want to return to what I was before. I get so tired during the day after I eat a breakfast or lunch and was much more happier and energetic when I tried IF.

I have a feeling this study will turn out like every study done on coffee. Every other year coffee is either great or bad for your health. Next year, we may hear something different from IF, but this one does make be think twice.

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

The Plant Based Morning Show did a podcast on it this morning. It starts at about 23 minutes in. I haven't listened to it yet but if anyone is interested in more discussion on it you can get some there.

[–] bhmnscmm@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's an interesting correlation, but it's still based on self-reported data in an epidemiological study. What were those people eating? What was their activity level? What time of day were they eating? How did their overall calorie intake compare to non-IF diets?

I didn't read the original paper, just this linked article, but it doesn't sound like those factors were considered. There is definitely a lot more work needed to establish a causal relationship.

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

These are some of the same questions I had. Maybe eating like this really does kill you but maybe it's actually pointing at some other factors they didn't even consider. Where did they find the study participants? Were they all overweight or obese and using IF to lose weight? Did they eat a healthy diet, or was it 8 hours a day of non-stop hamburgers and pizza? Did they exercise or were they physically active? It just sounds way too general to draw such dire conclusions. Again, maybe the time restriction is actually the problem but it doesn't sound like there enough info here to actually determine that.

[–] ArtVandelay@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

So give us the dataset then, researchers.