People with obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure or high cholesterol are often advised to eat less and move more, but our new research suggests there is now another simple tool to fight off these diseases: restricting your eating time to a daily 10-hour window.

肥胖、高血糖、高血压或高胆固醇的人经常被建议少吃多动，但我们的最新研究表明，现在有另外一个简单的方法来对抗这些疾病：把每天的进食时间限制在10小时以内。

Studies done in mice and fruit flies suggest that limiting when animals eat to a daily window of 10 hours can prevent, or even reverse, metabolic diseases that affect millions in the U.S.

在小鼠和果蝇身上进行的研究表明，将动物每天进食时间限制在10小时以内，可以预防甚至逆转影响美国数百万人的代谢性疾病。

We are scientists — a cell biologist and a cardiologist — and are exploring the effects of the timing of nutrition on health. Results from flies and mice led us and others to test the idea of time-restricted eating in healthy people. Studies lasting more than a year showed that TRE was safe among healthy individuals. Next, we tested time-restricted eating in patients with conditions known collectively as metabolic syndrome. We were curious to see if this approach, which had a profound impact on obese and diabetic lab rats, can help millions of patients who suffer from early signs of diabetes, high blood pressure and unhealthy blood cholesterol.

我们的科学家、细胞生物学家和心脏病学家，正在探索营养补给时间对健康的影响。来自果蝇和小鼠的研究结果让我们和其他人有了在健康人身上测试限时进食的想法。持续一年多的研究表明，在健康人群中，三氯甲苯噻嗪是安全的。接下来，我们测试了患有代谢综合征的患者限时进食的情况。我们很想知道，这种对肥胖和糖尿病实验鼠产生深远影响的方法，能否帮助数百万患有糖尿病、高血压和不健康血液胆固醇早期症状的患者。

A leap from prevention to treatment

从预防到治疗的飞跃

It’s not easy to count calories or figure out how much fat, carbohydrates and protein are in every meal. That’s why using TRE provides a new strategy for fighting obesity and metabolic diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. Several studies had suggested that TRE is a lifestyle choice that healthy people can adopt and that can reduce their risk for future metabolic diseases.

计算每顿饭的卡路里、脂肪、碳水化合物和蛋白质的含量并不容易。这就是为什么使用TRE（ Time-Restricted Eating ）为对抗影响全球数百万人的肥胖和代谢疾病提供了一种新的策略。几项研究表明，TRE是一种健康人群可以接受的生活方式选择，可以降低他们未来患代谢性疾病的风险。

However, TRE is rarely tested on people already diagnosed with metabolic diseases. Furthermore, the vast majority of patients with metabolic diseases are often on medication, and it was not clear whether it was safe for these patients to go through daily fasting of more than 12 hours — as many experiments require — or whether TRE will offer any benefits in addition to those from their medications.

然而，TRE很少在已经被诊断出患有代谢疾病的人身上进行测试。此外，绝大多数的代谢疾病患者经常服用药物,目前也尚不清楚这些患者每天禁食超过12小时是否安全,许多实验要求——或是除了他们经常服用的药物，TRE是否提供好处。

In a unique collaboration between our basic science and clinical science laboratories, we tested whether restricting eating to a 10-hour window improved the health of people with metabolic syndrome who were also taking medications that lower blood pressure and cholesterol to manage their disease.

在我们的基础科学和临床科学实验室之间的一次独特合作中，我们测试了将进食时间限制在10小时以内是否能改善代谢综合征患者的健康，这些患者同时还在服用降低血压和胆固醇的药物来控制病情。

We recruited patients from UC San Diego clinics who met at least three out of five criteria for metabolic syndrome: obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high level of bad cholesterol and low level of good cholesterol. The patients used a research app called myCircadianClock, developed in our lab, to log every calorie they consumed for two weeks. This helped us to find patients who were more likely to spread their eating out over the span of 14 hours or more and might benefit from 10-hour TRE.

我们从加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UC San Diego)的诊所招募了一些患者，他们至少符合代谢综合征五项标准中的三项:肥胖、高血糖、高血压、高坏胆固醇和低好胆固醇。这些患者使用我们实验室开发的一款名为myCircadianClock的研究应用程序，记录他们两周内摄入的卡路里。这帮助我们找到了那些可能在14个小时或更长时间内外出就餐的病人，他们能否会从10小时TRE中受益。

We monitored their physical activity and sleep using a watch worn on the wrist. As some patients with bad blood glucose control may experience low blood glucose at night, we also placed a continuous glucose monitor on their arm to measure blood glucose every few minutes for two weeks.

我们用戴在手腕上的手表来监测他们的身体活动和睡眠。由于一些血糖控制不好的患者可能会在夜间出现低血糖，所以我们也在他们的手臂上安置了一个连续的血糖监测器，每隔几分钟测量一次血糖，持续两周。

Nineteen patients qualified for the study. Most of them had already tried standard lifestyle interventions of reducing calories and doing more physical activity. As part of this study, the only change they had to follow was to self-select a window of 10 hours that best suited their work-family life to eat and drink all of their calories, say from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Drinking water and taking medications outside this window were allowed. For the next 12 weeks they used the myCircadianClock app, and for the last two weeks of the study they also had the continuous glucose monitor and activity monitor.

共有19名患者符合研究条件。他们中的大多数人已经尝试过减少热量摄入和增加体育活动等标准的生活方式。作为这项研究的一部分，他们所要做的唯一改变就是自我选择满足工作和家庭生活需求的10个小时来摄入所有的卡路里，比如从早上9点到晚上7点。在这个窗口外喝水和吃药是允许的。在接下来的12周，他们使用myCircadianClock应用程序，在研究的最后两周，他们还使用了连续的血糖监测器和活动监测器。

Timing is the medicine

时间就是良药

After 12 weeks, the volunteers returned to the clinic for a thorough medical examination and blood tests. We compared their final results with those from their initial visit. The results, which we published in Cell Metabolism, were pleasantly surprising. We found most of them lost a modest amount of body weight, particularly fat from their abdominal region. Those who had high blood glucose levels when fasting also reduced these blood sugar levels. Similarly, most patients further reduced their blood pressure and LDL cholesterol. All of these benefits happened without any change in physical activity.

12周后，志愿者回到诊所进行全面的体检和血液测试。我们将他们的最终结果与他们的初次结果进行了比较。我们在《细胞代谢》（Cell Metabolism）杂志上发表的研究结果令人惊喜。我们发现大多数人的体重都有一定程度的下降，尤其是腹部的脂肪。那些在禁食时血糖水平高的人也降低了血糖水平。同样，大多数患者的血压和低密度脂蛋白胆固醇也会进一步降低。所有这些好处都是在体力活动没有任何变化的情况下产生的。

Reducing the time window of eating also had several inadvertent benefits. On average, patients reduced their daily caloric intake by a modest 8 percent. However, statistical analyses did not find strong association between calorie reduction and health improvement. Similar benefits of TRE on blood pressure and blood glucose control were also found among healthy adults who did not change caloric intake.

减少进食的时间窗口也有一些被忽视的好处。平均而言，患者每天摄入的热量减少了8%。然而，统计分析并没有发现减少卡路里和改善健康之间有很强的联系。在没有改变热量摄入的健康成年人中，也发现了类似的对血压和血糖控制的益处。

Nearly two-thirds of patients also reported restful sleep at night and less hunger at bedtime — similar to what was reported in other TRE studies on relatively healthier cohorts. While restricting all eating to just a six-hour window was hard for participants and caused several adverse effects, patients reported they could easily adapt to eating within a 10-hour span. Although it was not necessary after completion of the study, nearly 70 percent of our patients continued with the TRE for at least a year. As their health improved, many of them reported having reduced their medication or stopped some medication.

近三分之二的患者还报告称，他们晚上睡得很安稳，睡前饥饿感较轻，这与其他针对相对健康人群的TRE研究报告类似。虽然将所有进食限制在6小时内对参与者来说很困难，并造成了一些不良影响，但患者表示，他们可以在10小时内轻松适应进食。虽然在研究结束后没有必要，但我们的患者中有近70%的人至少持续接受了一年的TRE治疗。随着他们的健康状况的改善，他们中的许多人报告减少了他们的药物治疗或停止了一些药物治疗。

Despite the success of this study, time-restricted eating is not currently a standard recommendation from doctors to their patients who have metabolic syndrome. This study was a small feasibility study; more rigorous randomized control trials and multiple location trials are necessary next steps. Toward that goal, we have started a larger study on metabolic syndrome patients.

尽管这项研究取得了成功，但对于患有代谢综合征的患者，限时进食目前并不是医生的标准建议。本研究为小型可行性研究;下一步需要更严格的随机对照试验和多地点试验。为了实现这一目标，我们已经开始了一项针对代谢综合征患者的更大范围的研究。

Although we did not see any of our patients go through dangerously low levels of glucose during overnight fasting, it is important that time-restricted eating be practiced under medical supervision. As TRE can improve metabolic regulation, it is also necessary that a physician pays close attention to the health of the patient and adjusts medications accordingly.

虽然我们没有看到我们的病人在通宵禁食期间经历危险的低血糖水平，但在医疗监督下实行限时进食是很重要的。由于TRE可以改善代谢调节，医生也有必要密切关注病人的健康并相应地调整药物。

We are cautiously hopeful that time-restricted eating can be a simple, yet powerful approach to treating people with metabolic diseases.

我们谨慎地希望限时进食可以成为治疗代谢性疾病的简单而有效的方法。