Time for a Change?
Do you have the time to make a change?
Recently a study on diets was published that made it into the headlines. One headline read: “It’s not what you eat, but when: Intermittent fasting boosts heart health of high-risk patients”
So is it true? Is the content of your diet less important than the timing of when you eat? If so, this could be a magic solution for a lot of people who don’t really want to change the behaviors that made them unhealthy. It would be so nice to be able to continue to eat hamburgers, bacon or brats, but just do it between certain hours of the day.
Well, let’s look at what the study actually showed. Dr. Pam Taub and her research team at UCSD looked at a dietary pattern called Time-Restricted Eating, which is more commonly referred to by the public as “intermittent fasting”. We referred to some of Dr. Taub’s earlier research in our May 2023 blog (link here). In this recent study, 108 people, carefully monitored in a highly controlled setting, were asked to restrict their eating to a 8 or 10 hour window (for example, only eating between 10am and 6pm). The research team found that after 3 months of eating in this pattern, blood test markers of diabetes status improved. The average Hemoglobin A1c (a measure of sugar control over the prior 3 months) improved by a statistically significant degree, but it was only a measly 0.1% improvement.
Contrast this with studies that looked at the effects of changing WHAT you eat, rather than WHEN you eat. In one similar study, compared to people who ate a standard diet, people who changed to a plant-based diet for 3 months achieved a 0.5% A1c improvement. This change was obviously FIVE times more powerful than changing WHEN you eat. When the researchers looked at the subgroup of people that most successfully changed to a plant-based diet, they found that the HbA1c level improved by 0.9%, almost a full percentage point, after just 3 months! That’s about the same magnitude of reduction we see with most prescription diabetes medications.
Which means that just like many other conditions, making changes in your lifestyle can prevent the need for diabetes medications, or even get you off them.
And of course, this really isn’t news. It’s not a coincidence that Vegans and Vegetarians have the lowest prevalence of diabetes (50-60% less likely than non-vegetarians). A meta-analysis performed in 2014 of six randomized controlled trials showed that consumption of vegetarian diets was associated with a significant reduction in HbA1c of 0.4%. This means that changing WHAT you eat is 4 times more powerful than changing WHEN you eat.
So you can make an easy decision to do “intermittent fasting” and simply skip breakfast and nighttime snacking. You will indeed lose a little weight and improve your sugars a little. Honestly, just getting rid of nighttime snacking alone will improve your health.
But if you want to achieve real significant improvements in your health, then you can’t take the easy way out and skip a meal; you have to change WHAT you are eating.
Do you have the time for that?
At Wisconsin Cardiology Associates, we counsel our patients to aim for a healthy, plant-based diet, emphasizing fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, whole grains and nuts. Have questions about the best way you can prevent heart disease? Call us and make an appointment for a consultation.
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