How to Have a Heart Attack: Keep Eating the
Western Diet
(NaturalNews) A multi-national study just
published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association concludes about
30 percent of heart attack risk comes from one thing - diet.
Is it your family history? Your age? Just plain bad luck?
No. Instead, according to the research, the cause is something people in 52
countries are doing to themselves -- eating the so-called typical Western diet
loaded with fried foods, meat and salty junk food snacks.
However, the scientists found that when people's diets included a high intake of fruits
and vegetables -- he same eating strategy natural health advocates have been urging for
decades -- heart attack risk plummeted.
"The objective of this study was to understand the modifiable risk factors of heart
attacks at a global level," Salim Yusuf, D.Phil., the study's senior author, said in
a statement to the media.
The study also looked at the unique dietary pattern the scientists dubbed
"Oriental" that contains a lot of soy and salt laden sauces. They found the
"Oriental" diet did not raise the risk of heart attack but didn't lower it,
either. In fact, it was only the eating style the research team labeled the
"Prudent" diet -- the one loaded with fruits and veggies -- that dramatically
decreased heart attack risk.
Dr. Yusuf's team used data from the INTERHEART study and analyzed 5,761 heart attack cases
and compared them to 10,646 controls who had no known heart disease. A dietary risk score
questionnaire was used to interview and document the eating habits of the heart attack
patients. "A simple dietary score, which included both good and bad foods with the
higher score indicating a worse diet, showed that 30 percent of the risk of heart disease
in a population could be related to poor diet," Romania Iqbal, Ph.D., Dr. Yusuf's
co-researcher, explained in a press statement.
After adjusting for known cardiovascular risk factors, the scientists found:
• People who consumed more fruits and vegetables had a 30 percent lower risk of heart
attack compared to people who ate few or no fruits and vegetables.
• People who ate a typical Western diet, no matter what part of the world they lived
in, had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack compared to people who consumed
little or no fried foods and meat.
This shows an unhealthy dietary intake marked by meat, fried and salty foods and not
enough fruits and vegetables accounts for nearly one-third of the world population's
attributable risk for heart attack, Dr. Yusuf, Director of the Population Health Research
Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario, Canada,explained in a prepared
statement.
Bottom line: Imagine the billions of dollars drug companies would make off of a medication
that could slash the risk of heart attack by almost a third. Instead of waiting for such a
"miracle drug", mindful eating of micronutrient, vitamin, mineral, fiber rich
and delicious fruits and vegetables makes more sense – and following this style of
healthy eating can help reduce the risk of a host of other diseases too, from diabetes to
cancer. (Natural
News, Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor, See all articles by this author, Email
this author) http://www.naturalnews.com/z024556_risk_eating_heart_attack.html
Knowledge is the key to good health!
- Pacific
