Simple Change in When You Eat May Slow One Degenerative Condition - Newsweek

Huntington’s disease is a genetic disorder that currently has no known cure, but a simple adjustment to when people eat could offer a new way to slow the progression of the inherited condition.

A research team, from Oregon Health & Science University, found that a form of intermittent fasting was safe for those diagnosed and linked to improvements in several measures of the condition.

"One of the most encouraging findings was that time-restricted eating appeared to reduce a key marker of neurodegeneration while remaining safe and sustainable for participants," Russell Wells, the study's lead author, told Newsweek. "The results suggest this simple dietary approach may help protect brain cells, but larger clinical trials are needed to confirm whether it can slow disease progression."

The findings, published in Nature Metabolism, are the first from a clinical study testing time-restricted eating in people with Huntington's disease, which affects movement, thinking and mood over time.

While the condition cannot currently be cured, treatments are available to help manage symptoms.

The 12-week study enrolled 20 adults with early-stage Huntington's disease.

Participants limited food consumption to a daily six-to-eight-hour window, selecting eating schedules that suited their routines, typically from late morning to early evening.

Researchers encouraged participants to maintain their usual calorie intake and closely monitored their weight and overall safety throughout the trial. The approach appeared to be well tolerated.

Participants followed the eating schedule on average more than five days each week, reported few side effects and maintained both body weight and lean muscle mass.

The research team had initially been uncertain whether intermittent fasting would be safe in people with Huntington's disease because unintended weight loss is already a concern for many patients and a primary symptom.

The study itself had grown out of earlier research in animal models which suggested that intermittent fasting can activate cellular pathways that help protect brain cells.

Researchers observed several positive changes during the trial.

Participants improved by an average of 0.5 points on the composite Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale, a widely used measure of disease severity. In people with early-stage Huntington's disease, the score typically declines by around one point each year.

The team also found that blood levels of neurofilament light, a biomarker released when nerve cells are damaged, fell by an average of 13 percent. In Huntington's disease, these levels would normally be expected to rise over time as the condition progresses.

The study further found improvements in cellular energy production, providing additional evidence that changes in eating patterns could influence biological processes linked to the disease.

Huntington's disease affects about 41,000 Americans, while more than 200,000 others are at risk because of a family history of the condition, according to the Huntington's Disease Society of America. Each child of an affected parent has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the genetic mutation that causes the disorder.

Symptoms usually begin between the ages of 30 and 50, although they can develop at any age. Early signs may include difficulty concentrating, memory problems, depression, anxiety, personality changes and involuntary movements. As the disease progresses, people can experience problems with speech and swallowing, weight loss, stiffness and more severe mood and behavioral changes.

Dr. Susan Liebman, research professor of pharmacology at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the new findings offer a potentially valuable avenue for future research but stressed that they do not alter the underlying genetics of the disease.

"As a geneticist who works on protein misfolding and aggregation, I'm glad to see a possible new angle on Huntington's," she told Newsweek. "The mechanism is plausible. Huntington's is caused by an expanded CAG repeat that produces a protein that aggregates and that the cell struggles to clear.

“Fasting is one way to turn up autophagy, the cell's disposal machinery."

However, Liebman emphasized that the study remains an exploratory first step and should be taken in with caution.

"It reports that participants did not lose weight, which matters for future studies because unintended weight loss in Huntington's is associated with faster decline," she said. "But this was an exploratory study of 20 people, unblinded, with no control group, over 12 weeks.

“Learning whether the disease itself was slowed will take a randomized, controlled trial."

Wells, R. G., et al. (2026). Effects of time-restricted eating in early-stage Huntington’s disease: a pilot study. Nature Metabolism. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42255-026-01612-x.