Time restricted eating cognition study finds brain gains in older women
A Rutgers-led study found women eating within eight to nine hours did better on some cognition tests after six months.
By Frankie Delgado · News Reporter
3 min read
A small time restricted eating cognition study led by Rutgers researchers suggests that shortening the daily eating window may sharpen some thinking skills in older women with overweight or obesity.
The six-month study was led by Sue Shapses, a professor at Rutgers University and Rutgers-RWJ Medical Center, and its findings were presented Sunday at the American Society for Nutrition annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, according to MarketWatch.
The research included 47 women ages 50 to 79 who were overweight or obese. One group ate within an eight-to-nine-hour span each day, while the other ate across roughly 12 hours, according to the report.
Women in the shorter-window group generally ate between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and stopped eating four hours before bedtime. Both groups were also told to reduce daily calories by 500.
Can time restricted eating help cognition?
In this study, the women who ate during the shorter window performed better on tests that measured spatial planning and problem solving than those in the 12-hour group, according to the findings reported by MarketWatch.
The shorter-window group also made fewer errors on tests tied to memory and learning. That result, however, did not meet the study’s threshold for statistical significance, according to the report.
Weight loss alone did not explain the difference in the cognitive tests. By the end of the study, both groups had lost an average of 15 pounds, regardless of whether they ate across eight to nine hours or about 12 hours.
Time-restricted eating means limiting food intake to a set stretch of the day rather than spreading meals and snacks from morning to night. In this study, the approach paired a shorter eating period with a calorie cut, so the findings do not show what meal timing alone would do.
What researchers still do not know
Shapses cautioned MarketWatch that the work was small and that she did not want to overstate the result, though she called it encouraging. Because the study included only women, it does not answer whether men would see the same effect.
More research is also needed to test the finding in a larger and broader group of people, Shapses said. She also said it remains unclear whether a shorter eating window would help people who do not need to lose weight, or whether an even tighter window would produce stronger cognitive changes.
Shapses said researchers still need to understand why meal timing may affect the brain. Areas for further study include circadian rhythm, inflammation, metabolic health and the body’s biochemical response to food, according to MarketWatch.
Why the Alzheimer’s angle matters
The findings land in a high-stakes area of aging research. Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, and women tend to live longer than men, while age is the biggest risk factor for the fatal disease, according to the report.
Obesity is also a risk factor that raises the likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that 7.4 million people age 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s.
The Rutgers-led research does not prove that a shorter eating window prevents dementia or Alzheimer’s. It does add one more question to the brain-health menu: whether the timing of meals, not just what people eat, may play a role in keeping cognition steadier with age.
This story draws on original reporting from MarketWatch.