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By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical WriterMon Apr 14, 6:17 PM ET
A large study offers the strongest evidence yet that a diet the government
recommends for lowering blood pressure can save people from heart attack and
stroke.
Researchers followed more than 88,000 healthy women for almost 25 years. They
examined their food choices and looked at how many had heart attacks and
strokes. Those who fared best had eating habits similar to those recommended by
the government to stop high blood pressure.
The plan, called the DASH diet, favors fruits, vegetables, whole grains,
low-fat milk and plant-based protein over meat.
Women with those eating habits were 24 percent less likely to have a heart
attack and 18 percent less likely to have a stroke than women with more typical
American diets.
Those are meaningful reductions since these diseases are so common. About two
in five U.S. women at age 50 will eventually develop cardiovascular disease,
which includes heart attacks and strokes. Women in the study were in their
mid-30s to late 50s when the research began in 1980.
Previous research has shown this kind of diet can help prevent high blood
pressure and cholesterol, which both can lead to heart attacks.
The new study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
People might think, "I don't have high blood pressure, so I don't have to
follow it," said Simmons College researcher Teresa Fung, the study's lead
author. However, the results suggest, she said, that "even healthy people
should get on it."
About 15,000 women in the study had diets that closely resembled the low blood
pressure diet. They ate about twice as many fruits, vegetables and grains as
the estimated 18,000 women whose diets more closely resembled typical American
eating habits.
Although the study only followed women, Fung said men would probably get
similar benefits from the approach.
The study was limited because it merely tracked the women and their habits for
24 years. That's a less rigorous method than randomly assigning equal groups of
women different diets and comparing results. But that would be extremely
difficult to do for such a long time.
Given that limitation, Dr. Laura Svetkey, director of Duke University's
hypertension center, said the study provides the best evidence yet of important
long-term benefits from a low blood pressure diet.
"It's nice to see research that really is aimed at helping people with
prevention in a very practical way," Svetkey said. She noted that the DASH
diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, is available
free on the National Institutes of Health Web site. The study was funded with
NIH grants.
Dr. Nieca Goldberg, medical director of New York University's Women's Heart
Program, said many patients would rather take a pill than adjust their eating
habits. But, Goldberg said, "I always point out to my patients, if you make
these changes in your lives, it could ... keep you off medication" in the long
run.
"There has to be a greater emphasis on the way we live our lives," she said.