Zhilei Shan and his scientific colleagues from Huazhong University of Science and Technology have completed a population cohort study that established a correlation between the time people eat, mortality rates, and overall life expectancy.
Data collected as part of the American NHANES study from 1999 to 2018 were used for the analysis. The sample included information on more than 31 thousand people who were aged 40 or older at the start of the study. The average weighted age of the participants was 57.9 years, with 53.1 percent of them being women.
Meal timing was determined using a 24-hour questionnaire. Data on all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality were obtained from the national death registry, which also served as the basis for calculating life expectancy. The relationship between these indicators was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards models, taking into account various confounding factors.
The results of this study were officially published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.