DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: I’m one of the leading experts on intermittent fasting. Was I wrong all along?

I was shocked and surprised to see headlines this week suggesting that intermittent fasting—particularly a type known as time-restricted eating (TRE)—could be bad for your heart, increasing your risk of a fatal heart attack.

After the news broke, my phone went red with calls asking me to comment. Like many others, I have incorporated various elements of intermittent fasting into my daily routine for years to control my weight and keep my blood sugar levels low. . In fact, intermittent fasting is a central part of my best-selling Fast 800 diet.

Over the past decade, I’ve spoken to many experts, read many studies, and participated in studies that have all shown how beneficial intermittent fasting can be. But will this new study change my opinion?

There are many different forms of intermittent fasting, from the 5:2 diet (where you cut calories two days a week) to time-restricted eating (TRE), where you simply reduce the number of hours you eat.

Essentially, it’s a way to give your body a break from digesting food, to help induce “autophagy,” a form of cellular “spring cleaning,” where old cells are broken down and recycled.

A review of all the best research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019, concluded that ‘intermittent fasting has broad-spectrum benefits for many health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus (type 2 diabetes), cardiovascular disease and cancer. and neurological disorders (such as dementia)’.

So I was very surprised by this new research, which suggests that following a 16:8 pattern of time-restricted eating (fasting for 16 hours and eating over an eight-hour window) is associated with a 91 percent higher risk of death from cardiac – and vascular diseases. disease.

Could it be that I and so many others have done it spectacularly wrong? I have read the study summary – which is the only one available at the moment and is essentially the summary – and I am convinced that there is nothing to worry about.

The previously unpublished study from researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine looked at data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys collected between 2003 and 2018.

In these surveys, Americans were asked about their eating habits. What the Chinese researchers did was pick out those who checked a box saying they had limited their food consumption to a window of eight hours or less on two days. The researchers then compared these people to the US National Death Index database to see what happened to them.

It turned out that these intermittent fasters had almost twice the risk of dying from heart disease than people who didn’t check these boxes.

There are many problems with trying to make sense of this study, not least because we don’t know how old the participants were, how healthy they were, whether their recall was accurate and, most importantly, whether those two days were representative for what happened. they did that for the rest of the week.

As Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, noted: ‘We don’t know whether their eating times during those two 24-hour periods were typical of the times they usually ate. So it seems to go well beyond the data to relate these patterns to a long-term, purposeful, time-bound eating intervention.”

Sir David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, agreed, adding somewhat scathingly: ‘This summary should not have been embellished with a press release.’

Other experts pointed out that the people who reported eating only within an eight-hour window may have done so because they had previously had heart problems or had eaten that way because they worked shifts, which itself is linked to increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Finally, we have no idea what these people consumed. Was it a healthy Mediterranean diet or processed junk food? So no, my belief in the benefits of intermittent fasting has not been shaken by this summary.

If you’re happy with your TRE regimen, the latest research suggests it’s better to eat more calories earlier and avoid a large evening meal.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications of 100,000 adults found that eating breakfast before 8 a.m. and stopping eating 12-13 hours later led to the greatest improvements in heart disease risk and risk of type 2 diabetes. Eating after 9 p.m. hours was linked to a 13 percent increased risk of heart disease.

(This is probably because it works better with your body clock rhythms and the production of hormones like insulin.)

So I recommend that you avoid eating late at night (try to stop two to three hours before bedtime), aim for a 12 to 14 hour ‘fasting period’ and stick to a nutritious Mediterranean diet.

Various types of colon cancer can be detected more quickly with a scan

The good news is that thanks to screening and new treatments, survival rates for most cancers have increased.

Unfortunately, the number of cases of some cancers continues to rise, especially among younger groups. One of the most striking examples is colon cancer. A recent article in the journal Annals of Oncology predicted that deaths from bowel cancer among young people in Britain will be 26 percent higher in men and almost 39 percent higher in women this year than in 2018.

The researchers from the University of Milan blame rising rates of obesity, in addition to heavy alcohol consumption and low physical activity. But sometimes it’s just bad luck. The best way to protect yourself is to catch it early, so if you’ve got a home test from the NHS (in England it’s offered to the over-60s, although all over-50s will soon be eligible), use It.

The test involves collecting a small sample of poop and sending it to a laboratory where they check it for small amounts of blood. If it shows signs of blood, you will be referred for a colonoscopy to examine the lining of your intestine (and possibly a biopsy afterwards). I had this done and while it is an important test, I can’t say I enjoyed the process.

And so I was pleased that new research from the University of Glasgow showed that in the future it could be possible to use a PET scan instead of doing a biopsy. It showed that PET scans can accurately diagnose different types of colon cancer more quickly, which could help match patients with the best treatment for them.

In other good news, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered how early colon cancers manage to evade our immune system.

They do this by making a protein, SOX17, which is normally produced by a fetus to protect itself from attack by the mother’s immune system. As a result of a mutation, intestinal cells also start making it. If scientists can find a way to block SOX17, it could provide a new way to treat early-stage cancer.

For ethical and environmental reasons, I try to reduce the amount of meat I eat, and that means that, in addition to tofu and lentils, I’ve been exploring meat substitutes such as insects, which are packed with protein and proteins. fiber.

I’ve tried locusts, locusts, and mealworms, and they were all okay. But what about eating snakes?

A recent study from Macquarie University in Australia concluded that snakes are a great source of protein and are more environmentally friendly than eating beef or lamb.

That’s because cold-blooded reptiles are more efficient at converting the food they eat into protein than warm-blooded animals.

When I was last in China, I was offered snake cooked in a stew. It made me a bit squeamish, but it was tasty, a bit like chicken.