Fit celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Kourtney Kardashian, and Gisele Bundchen practice intermittent fasting. Many attribute their slimness to the method, which restricts food consumption to a specific time period per day.
According to a new study, intermittent fasting can also lead to an early death.
In a study published in the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, researchers discovered that skipping breakfast increases the risk of cardiovascular disease-related death.
Those who consumed three meals each day, but at least two within 4.5 hours of one another, were also negatively affected.
Dr. Yangbo Sun, Department of Preventive Medicine, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, and the study’s lead author, noted that those who consume only one meal per day are more likely to perish than those who consume many meals per day.
Those who skip breakfast are more likely to acquire fatal cardiovascular diseases, and those who skip lunch or dinner increase their risk of mortality from all causes.
Researchers found that skipping meals caused individuals to consume more calories in a shorter amount of time, which overloaded the body’s metabolism with glucose and led to additional metabolic problems.
Forty percent of Americans over the age of 40 ate fewer than three meals per day, according to a study collecting data from over 24,000 individuals.
Those who consumed fewer than three meals per day tended to engage in harmful behaviors such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. They were younger, non-Hispanic black men with less schooling and a lower household income.
“At a time when intermittent fasting is frequently advocated as a solution for weight loss, metabolic health, and disease prevention, our study is significant for the vast proportion of American people who have fewer than three meals each day,” Sun said.
Sun suggested eating a minimum of two to three meals per day.
Dr. Wei Bao, the study’s principal investigator from the University of Iowa’s Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, stated that the results are significant even after adjusting for dietary and lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol use, physical activity levels, energy intake, diet quality, and food insecurity. Our conclusions are based on observations derived from public sources and do not imply a causal relationship.”
This is not the only study debunking intermittent fasting’s benefits. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) discovered in 2020 that those who intermittently fasted for 12 weeks shed barely half a pound more than those who ate normally.
»New study: Intermittent fasting can lead to an early death«