Diet and Cardiovascular Disease
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Health News Update: Diet and Cardiovascular Disease 2.16.26
Hello everyone: This is a paper that presents some pretty interesting perspective on how diet and heart disease intersect. First some important perspective, but keep in mind that most cardiovascular health problems start in your youth but take decades to become noticed:
“Successive epidemiologic studies have suggested that diet has a significant influence on the risk for cardiovascular disease. Given the slowness of the effects of diet modification and the rapid effects of medical therapy, the presumed protective effects of recommended diets are often neglected in favor of medication. However, the fact that the latter acts faster and more effectively does not mean that diet should be ignored, irrespective of the importance of other factors, including genetic, psychosocial, lifestyle, or other risk factors.”
“Normalization of lipid profile by Mediterranean-type diets, or by frequent
consumption of some of their traditional constituents, may be associated with a reduction of the inflammatory and pro-oxidant state that characterizes endothelial dysfunction, thereby helping to stabilize or reduce atherosclerotic lesions and their main cardiovascular complications.”
https://www.academia.edu/90020699/Diet_atherosclerosis_and_atherothrombotic_events?email_work_card=view-paper diet and arterial disease links
Bottom Line: In other words, do NOT neglect diet as a real tool to defeat the number one killer. We should pay more attention to prevention than waiting till we have an issue and offering reactive care that manages a condition as opposed to never having it. Note that this paper is from 2007 but is still accurate. While the science has evolved and progressed to the point that the majority of the data now fully supports their conclusions, it is important to put things into context. Diet works to impressively improve health outcomes, but it is often not dramatic. While you may actually prolong both your healthspan and your lifespan and actually save your own life by eating a minimally processed whole-foods, plant-based diet…you won’t get an Oscar for Best Outcome in a Drama. You will get so much more than that little statuette…like a vibrant and rich life with the ability to pursue your dreams, to be of service to your loved ones, to never be a burden to anyone, and on and on. Thus, your future health is largely in your own choices.
As Michael Pollen says in his great (small) book, “Food Rules”: “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” You should get this book…it is really good, a fast read, one-page chapters that are full of great information.
