[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%.
It also reduced the risk of mortality by about 20% 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% 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