Consistent, 10-hour daily eating window benefits adults with metabolic syndrome
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LOS ANGELES — Adults with metabolic syndrome, even those prescribed antihypertensive and statin drugs, who consistently limited food and beverage consumption to the same 10-hour period for 12 weeks experienced improvements in body composition, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, according to a speaker at the World Congress on Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease.
The time-restricted eating plan was designed to work with the body’s circadian rhythms to improve cardiometabolic health, Emily Manoogian, PhD, clinical researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, said during her presentation.
“When you think about the circadian system, if you were locked in a cave, you would still have those rhythms. It’s a completely endogenous system,” Manoogian said. “We have molecular clocks in pretty much every cell of our body, but they all can have approximately different periods, so we also have networks that coordinate all those systems. The main one is in the brain ... and it is going to respond directly to light.”
The system coordinator also responds to food, she said.
“Food actually directly changes how each of these individual cells are acting because nutrient availability is an entraining cue, so it can reset clocks throughout the body,” Manoogian said.
With time-restricted eating, the body anticipates nutrient intake and sets cardiometabolic responses accordingly. “It’s built to support your natural biological rhythms to optimize metabolism,” she said.
After a 2-week baseline assessment of eating and sleeping habits as well as cardiometabolic measures, Manoogian and colleagues instructed 19 adults with metabolic syndrome (at least three of the five components) to restrict their eating to the same personalized 10-hour window each day for 12 weeks. Participants wore a masked continuous glucose monitoring system (Abbott Libre Pro) and a Philips Actiwatch and logged their meals with the myCircadianClock app during the 2-week baseline period, during which they did not alter their behavior, and the last 2 weeks of the study. Weight, vital signs and laboratory values were recorded at baseline and at week 14.
At baseline, 16 participants had a prescription for at least one medication: 79% were taking a BP drug, 63% were taking a statin and one patient was taking metformin, among others. All participants had a daily eating window of at least 14 hours, with a mean of 15.1 hours. During the study, adherence to the eating window was more than 90%. They did not skip meals, but delayed breakfast and advanced dinner each by roughly 2 hours.
“So, we do think a 10-hour window is a feasible thing to do,” Manoogian said.
Participants did not change the quality of their food or their activity level; time in bed did not change, but participants logged more time sleeping or improved sleep quality, according to Manoogian.
At 14 weeks, mean values decreased from baseline for systolic BP (–5.12 mm Hg; P = .041), diastolic BP (–6.47 mm Hg; P = .004), waist circumference (–4.46 cm; P = .0097), and LDL (–11.94 mg/dL; P = .016) and total cholesterol (–13.16 mg/dL; P = .03). Similarly, mean values decreased from baseline for body weight (–3.3 kg; P = .00028), body fat percentage (–1.01%; P = .00013), visceral fat rating (–0.58; P = .004), fasting glucose (–5.74 mg/dL; P = .081), fasting insulin (–3.63 µIU/mL; P = .064) and HbA1c (–0.14%; P = .058).
“Long-duration eating is extremely common in modern society; over 50% of adults are eating over 15 hours a day,” Manoogian said. “We’ve all done this, but it’s something that is very easily changeable. A 10-hour time-restricted eating in humans can lead to weight loss and cardiometabolic benefits even for those who are already on medication. This can be a co-treatment with medication they’re already on.” – by Jill Rollet
References:
Manoogian E. Circadian rhythms, time-restricted eating and cardiometabolic health. Presented at: World Congress on Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease; Dec. 4-7, 2019; Los Angeles.
Wilkinson MJ, et al. Cell Metab. 2019;doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2019.11.004.
Disclosure: Manoogian reports no relevant financial disclosures.