13 hour daily fast associated with a 36 percent decrease in breast cancer recurrence | Ruth Patterson
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An overnight fast of at least 13 hours has been associated with a decrease in breast cancer recurrence and mortality among women, regardless of what the women ate. Constraining when one eats is an approach that can promote a sense of self-efficacy, which can lead to incorporating other healthy lifestyle behaviors such as walking. The whole family can participate in an adjusted eating window, which may also provide benefits for conditions including diabetes, fatty liver disease, and acid reflux. In this clip, Dr. Ruth Patterson discusses how simply changing when one eats can have a profound effect on the risk of breast cancer recurrence.
Rhonda: Right. You also mentioned another study that you...one of your research kind of said in passing that 13 hours of...at least 13 hours of fast was associated with a lower breast cancer recurrence?
Ruth: Right.
Rhonda: So, do you mind talking about that study for a little bit?
Ruth: Yeah. I'd be glad to. So this was a study in about 2,500 breast cancer survivors and they completed over about seven and a half years of follow-up, they completed many food records, right? So we collected all this information about what they ate. But then, more recently when this hypothesis came out, we went and dug up all their food records and said, well, how about if we don't care what you ate, but we just care about when you ate it? So, we reentered all the data as far as when they started to eat, you know, when they stopped, how long their fasting interval was, how much they ate at night, and then reanalyzed that data. And that's where we found that it seemed at least in this sample of women that the cutpoint of 13 hours reduced their risk of breast cancer recurrence by about 40 percent. It also reduced the risk of mortality by about 20 percent or a little more than that but that was not statistically significant. But it was just trending in the same direction, you know, it's possible. Because we do believe it's...although my area of research is breast cancer, we actually believe this dietary pattern could have really positive effects on other diseases and conditions, including Type II diabetes, or liver...fatty liver, NAFLD, also with acid reflux. You know, the first thing they tell you is try to sit up when you go to bed, don't eat a big meal so that which often leads to esophageal cancer. So we actually feel it can have a positive impact on many aspects of metabolism, not just cancer, it's just that we're very interested in teasing out its impact on cancer.
Rhonda: That's phenomenal, Ruth, those statistics that you just kind of just threw out there, like 40 percent reduction in breast cancer recurrence in women that were just simply fasting in the evening for 13 hours.
Ruth: Right.
Rhonda: And that is...
Ruth: Regardless of what you eat.
Rhonda: Regardless of what you eat.
Ruth: It controls for whether you're overweight or not.
Rhonda: Wow.
Ruth: Right.
Rhonda: Because it's really not that difficult to...I think it's much easier to...for people to make a modifiable change of just stopping what they're...you know, stop eating after 7 p.m., versus eat all your vegetables, stop eating your...
Ruth: Right.
Rhonda: ...cake. I mean, people should do that, but just saying.
Ruth: Yes, I still think diet quality matters, but we've done some pilot studies with women adapting a longer nightly fasting interval. And those studies have been amazing in terms of how simple it was for women to do it. We actually had a little app they used and they would text us, "Starting my fast." And then we'd text back saying, "Great. Don't forget, don't eat again before 8 a.m. or 9 a.m." You know, and so many participants said, you know, "I never understood percent energy from fat. It was always so confusing to me, it made me just feel stupid, I didn't even know how to do it but I just got this. In five minutes I got this, I could do it." And self-report ways, they reported often sleeping better. And we did it with a group of Latino women, Latinas in South Bay. And they were particularly positive about it, they said, you know, "In my family, if I tried to change up our entire way we eat, sometimes my family members weren't that positive about that. Where's our favorite foods?" And she goes, "But this, I could do it right away, it was really simple and it didn't affect the family or food ways. So it's very easy for me to do within our family without disrupting all of our family behaviors." They were very positive and often even reported, "I felt so proud of myself, okay, finally I'm doing something, I feel better, well I'm going to start walking too." You know, that kind of self-efficacy kind of spread to other health behaviors, which is our hope.
Rhonda: Yeah...
A digestive disorder, also known as acid reflux. GERD is characterized by burning pain in the upper abdomen, chest, and back. Treatment of GERD usually focuses on dietary and lifestyle modifications and pharmaceutical measures to reduce stomach acid production, and includes proton pump inhibitors, histamine blockers, and over-the-counter antacids.
The thousands of biochemical processes that run all of the various cellular processes that produce energy. Since energy generation is so fundamental to all other processes, in some cases the word metabolism may refer more broadly to the sum of all chemical reactions in the cell.
Fat is deposited in the liver due to causes other than excessive alcohol use such as diet, genetics, and long-term medication use. NAFLD is related to insulin resistance and the metabolic syndrome and may respond to treatments originally developed for other insulin-resistant states.
A digestive disorder in which acid in the stomach flows into the esophagus. Reflux can damage the esophagus over time, leading to structural and functional changes. Barrett’s esophagus is a type of precancerous condition related to reflux.
Restricting the timing of food intake to certain hours of the day (typically within an 8- to 12-hour time window that begins with the first food or non-water drink) without an overt attempt to reduce caloric intake. TRE is a type of intermittent fasting. It may trigger some beneficial health effects, such as reduced fat mass, increased lean muscle mass, reduced inflammation, improved heart function with age, increased mitochondrial volume, ketone body production, improved repair processes, and aerobic endurance improvements. Some of these effects still need to be replicated in human trials.
A metabolic disorder characterized by high blood sugar and insulin resistance. Type 2 diabetes is a progressive condition and is typically associated with overweight and low physical activity. Common symptoms include increased thirst, frequent urination, unexplained weight loss, increased hunger, fatigue, and impaired healing. Long-term complications from poorly controlled type 2 diabetes include heart disease, stroke, diabetic retinopathy (and subsequent blindness), kidney failure, and diminished peripheral blood flow which may lead to amputations.
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