Time Restricted Eating may induce diabetes remission

Intermittent fasting diets, also known as Time Restricted Eating (TRE) have become popular in recent years as an effective weight loss method. TRE is a form of chrono nutrition that focuses on limiting calorie intake to a shortened “eating window”, followed by a prolonged fasting period (e.g. 8 hour feeding window, 16 hour fasting period). Initial time-restricted feeding studies on diet-induced obesity in mice demonstrated improved weight loss and metabolic parameters when eating duration was limited to 8 hours or less. TRE has since been investigated in humans with some evidence for effectiveness in reducing bodyweight and improving certain cardio-metabolic parameters. In this study, researchers conducted a 3-month TRE diet intervention among 36 people with diabetes and found almost 90% of participants, including those who took blood sugar-lowering agents and insulin, reduced their diabetes medication intake after TRE. Fifty-five percent of these people experienced diabetes remission, discontinued their diabetes medication and maintained it for at least one year. Importantly, sixty-five percent of the study participants who achieved diabetes remission had a diabetes duration of more than 6 years – disease duration >6 years was an exclusion criteria in the DIRECT study which reported diabetes remission following a Very Low calorie Diet programme. Overall this study provided preliminary evidence of efficacy of TRE for diabetes remission. It would be interesting to have a randomised controlled study of VLCD vs TRE with a primary outcome measure being rate of diabetes remission.

The study was published in the Endocrine Reviews and received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.