Time-restricted eating – a non-drug approach for managing metabolic syndrome

The research on time-restricted eating is astonishing to me, not just because it works so well but because it works with such a lax eating window. Restricting eating to an 8-10hr period is easily within grasp of most people and most lifestyles - eat a late breakfast and an early dinner and you're done. Probably the best bang for your buck in terms of diet/lifestyle interventions.

> Compared with SOC, TRE improved HbA1c by −0.10%

So the effect is statistically detectable but unbelievably small. Whoever wrote the conclusion is torturing the results to get something publishable.

For reference A1C is measured roughly on a range from 0% (but in practice really 5%) to 10% where 1-2 whole percentage point differences matter and this effect is an order of magnitude off of where it needs to be to be practical.

I had Claude 3 Haiku summarize this in lay terms since it's quite a complex topic.

Here is a more simplified summary of the key points:

This study looked at whether a type of fasting called time-restricted eating (TRE) could help improve health in people with metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions like high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol that increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

The researchers had two groups of people with metabolic syndrome:

1. One group received standard nutritional counseling. 2. The other group received nutritional counseling plus a personalized TRE program. This meant they could only eat during an 8-10 hour window each day.

After 3 months, the TRE group showed a small but meaningful improvement in their HbA1c (a measure of blood sugar control) compared to the standard counseling group.

The study was relatively short and relied on people reporting their own diet, so the results may have been affected by other factors. But the researchers concluded that the TRE program could be a helpful lifestyle intervention to modestly improve blood sugar regulation in people with metabolic syndrome.

One of the study authors is Dr. Satchin Panda, from the Salk Institute. (He appears to be a real working scientist, unlike most health influencers.)

I learned a lot from his book The Circadian Code.

I've had some friends get their gall bladder removed.

One of them mentioned that binge eating can lead to gallstones.

I wonder if intermittent fasting is risky in respect to your gall bladder and gallstones.

Time restricted eating is cool. Let's just not imply that it's special and the results are from anything other than the spontaneous reduction in calorie intake.

Forget it, people want pill to get lean while eating twice a day at McDonald's.

Anything else is too much hassle, especially eating less.