Is Intermittent Fasting a Good Idea After 60?

Intermittent fasting has become enormously popular.

The basic idea is simple:

Don’t eat for part of the day—or sometimes much longer.

For some people, it can be a useful way to structure eating.

But much of the fasting research has focused on younger or middle-aged adults.

What happens when you’re older?

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet looked at 2,981 adults aged 60 and older in Sweden and examined whether their longest daily gap between meals was associated with how quickly they accumulated chronic diseases.

The participants were followed for up to 15 years.

The results were interesting.

People whose longest habitual daily meal gap was 14 to 24 hours accumulated chronic diseases more quickly than people whose longest gap was about 6 to 11.5 hours.

The association was particularly apparent among people 78 and older.

But here’s the important part.

This study did not prove that fasting causes disease.

It was observational.

Researchers measured people’s existing eating patterns and followed them over time.

That means other factors could be involved.

Someone who eats once or twice a day may have different health, appetite, medications, activity levels or living circumstances from someone who eats several times a day.

The researchers performed additional analyses to address some possible explanations, but observational research cannot eliminate every source of uncertainty.

So is fasting bad for older adults?

We don’t know.

And that’s actually the honest answer.

The study is useful precisely because it reminds us that findings in younger adults don’t automatically transfer to people in their 70s, 80s and beyond.

Older adults also face a different nutritional challenge: maintaining adequate nutrition and muscle becomes increasingly important.

The Watchdog takeaway

If you’re over 60 and experimenting with long fasting windows, don’t assume that longer automatically means healthier.

And don’t follow a fasting trend simply because it worked for somebody on social media.