Time-restricted eating slows blood vessel aging in animals
In an animal experiment, limiting daily eating hours altered gut bacteria and boosted acetic acid, easing high blood pressure and artery stiffness.
In an animal experiment, researchers tested how time-restricted feeding, which limits food intake to set daily hours, affected accelerated cardiovascular aging caused by angiotensin II, a blood pressure hormone.
The feeding schedule reshaped the gut microbiome, preserved the gut barrier, and lowered inflammation in the animals. This reduced high blood pressure, stiffening of the aorta, and harmful heart changes. Transferring gut microbes from treated animals repeated these benefits, while antibiotics erased them. The researchers identified a gut bacterium, Limosilactobacillus, that produced acetic acid during restricted feeding. In both animal cardiovascular tissues and cultured human endothelial cells, which line blood vessels, acetic acid reduced markers of senescence, a state where damaged cells stop dividing, and blocked an inflammatory form of cell death.
Why it matters
Cardiovascular diseases become more common as bodies age. The findings offer insights into how meal timing might serve as a non-pharmacological strategy against age-related cardiovascular disease.
Caveats
Cardiovascular aging was accelerated with a hormone rather than studied during natural aging. The study was conducted in animals and cultured cells, so whether the feeding schedule has the same effects in people remains to be tested.
From the paper
- Harms
Consistent with direct TRF intervention, transplantation of TRF microbiota caused no adverse effects on body weight, body mass index (Lee index), and fasting blood glucose (Figure S4C,D,G), or gastrointestinal symptoms (Figure S4E).
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