Health Update: Green Mediterranean Diet Improves Heart/Aortic Health
Hello again everyone:
At the end of the last newsletter, I mentioned using the Mediterranean diet as a starting place to lower your sugar intake and improve your health. It turns out that stiffness of our aorta (main blood vessel that leaves the heart) is a sensitive marker and early predictor of cardiovascular illness and risk of death. So, researchers wanted to see what effect the Mediterranean diet had on aortic stiffness, risk reduction and disease prevention. Here is what they found:
“Aortic stiffness regressed in overweight or dyslipidemic individuals who started a healthy diet, with the biggest benefit from a low-calorie "green" Mediterranean diet, post hoc analysis of a randomized trial showed.
The diet enriched with plant polyphenols and lower in red or processed meat and simple carbohydrates was better than a typical hypocaloric Mediterranean diet or following conventional healthy diet guidelines with regard to proximal aortic stenosis (PAS), reported Iris Shai, RD, PhD, of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel, and colleagues.”
https://www.jacc.org/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jacc.2023.02.032
Bottom Line:
While this study had some limitations and was primarily considered to be a hypothesis generating study that should lead to more studies, it still provided some valuable insights.
For example, here is data about the different dietary components of the study:
“The two Mediterranean diets were to total the same 1,500-1,800 kcal/day for men and 1,200-1,400 kcal/day for women and to include 28 g of walnuts daily. The "green" version of the Mediterranean diet added consumption of 3-4 cups of green tea and a shake made of Wolffia globosa (Mankai, a high-protein aquatic plant also known as duckweed) each day, along with avoidance of processed red meat. All three groups got free gym memberships and instructions for moderate-intensity, largely aerobic physical activity.”
Safe conclusions to draw from this study are that increasing your plant-based whole foods that are minimally processed, add some daily green tea, avoid processed red meat, and consider a plant-based protein shake along with moderate intensity exercise can significantly improve your health. Sounds reasonable to me. It is easy, do-able, and now we know how this approach can reduce your risk and improve disease prevention. Once again we are shown that Food is Medicine…always has been, always will be.
