Fasting Intermittently Linked to a 91% Increase in Heart Attack Death Risk: Is It True That Heart Attack Deaths Are Caused by Intermittent Fasting?

Heart attacks and intermittent fasting: Does the practice of intermittent fasting result in fatal heart attacks? Clarifying this claim, this post provides you with a thorough explanation.

Heart attack fatalities and intermittent fasting: You may be familiar with intermittent fasting, which is a well-liked health fad that is frequently used to improve health and lose weight. But recently, there has been news about a study that may have connected intermittent fasting to an increased risk of deadly heart attacks. So how accurate are these assertions? Does eating this way increase your risk of having a heart attack? Let’s explore what the body goes through while you adhere to this fasting technique and how it could affect the health of your heart.

Intermittent fasting: What Is It?

More appropriately, intermittent fasting should be seen as an eating pattern rather than a diet plan. It’s a distinctive eating pattern that alternates between eating and fasting times. It can be done in a number of ways, such as the well-known 16/8 approach, which entails fasting for 16 hours and feasting for 8 hours, or the 5:2 method, which calls for regular eating for five days a week and calorie-restricted eating on the other two.

The secret of intermittent fasting’s effectiveness is its capacity to modify hormone levels in the body in order to encourage weight loss. Your body goes through various changes when you fast. A decrease in insulin levels, which makes body fat that has been stored easily burnable, and an increase in norepinephrine, a hormone that aids in the breakdown of fat for energy, are crucial components. Fundamentally, intermittent fasting is an excellent weight loss strategy because it causes the metabolism to switch from burning glucose to fat.

Can A Fatal Heart Attack Death Result From Intermittent Fasting?

Experts have cautioned that those who restrict their daily eating to fewer than eight hours run a higher risk of passing away from heart disease, according to a recent study. Preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention, Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Scientific Sessions 2024, Chicago, March 18–21, revealed that individuals on a time-restricted eating plan or intermittent fasting were more likely to die from heart disease than those who ate 12–16 hours a day.

“Eating for a short amount of time each day—e.g., eight hours—has become more and more popular in recent years as a means of improving heart health and losing weight,” stated Victor Wenze Zhong, the senior study author and chair of the epidemiology and biostatistics department at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in Shanghai, China. “However, the long-term health effects of time-restricted eating, including the risk of death from any cause or cardiovascular disease, are unknown,” he stated.