Intermittent fasting may be beneficial for people with heart disease, diabetes

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Finding it hard to manage blood sugar levels? Take heart, limiting your food consumption to a 10-hour window daily may keep your diabetes in check, according to a study.

Following the 10-hour eating window, a type of intermittent fasting, can also help you manage metabolic syndrome -- a group of medical conditions that can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Risk factors attributing to the syndrome include elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol -- key factors for poor heart health.

Researchers led by the University of California San Diego and Salk Institute in the US said the findings may help people looking to address their metabolic syndrome and reduce their risk for Type 2 diabetes.

In the trial, published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine, 108 adult patients with metabolic syndrome were randomised into either a time-restricted eating group or a control group.

Both groups continued to receive standard-of-care treatments and underwent nutritional counselling on the Mediterranean diet.

In the time-restricted eating group, each person had to reduce their eating window to 10 hours per day, which began at least one hour after waking up and ended at least three hours before going to sleep.

After three months, patients who had completed the time-restricted eating regimen showed significant improvements in key indicators of heart health.

Satchidananda Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute explained that the time of day plays an important role in human bodies' processing of sugars and fats.

When people limit their eating window, they "re-engage the body's natural wisdom and harness its daily circadian rhythms to restore metabolism and improve health".

The routine also helped people lose body weight, maintain proper body mass index (BMI), and manage abdominal trunk fat -- a type of fat closely linked to metabolic disease, the researchers said. Importantly, participants did not experience significant loss of lean muscle mass, which is often a concern with weight loss.

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