HOME
Diet and Atherosclerosis information
Part 2: Healthy' diets increase heart attack risk
This is where you might expect a warning against cholesterol or saturated fatty diets. If you do expect me to suggest that, you would be wrong. And this is why:
Here is a curious fact which you can check with any veterinary surgeon: There are three basic types of animal when it comes to diet:
- Herbivores which eat only plants,
- omnivores which eat both meat and plants, and
- carnivores, which eat only meat.
While all three types can suffer a heart attack, the only animals where atherosclerosis builds up are those which eat plants, whether they eat plants exclusively or together with meat. And this includes humans. This suggests that, contrary to popular wisdom, it is not something in meat that is the contributory factor, but something in plants.
In 2005, the medical Journal, Archives of Internal Medicine, published a study with showed clearly that when blood glucose levels were raised for significant lengths of time, the risk of a heart attack was greatly increased.[7]
Long-term blood glucose levels are measured by the amount they glycosylate haemoglobin. The measurement is known as 'HbA1c' or 'haemoglobin A1c'. What this study showed was that, in diabetic adults, each 1% increase in HbA1c increased the risk of a heart attack by 14%.
And in non-diabetics with a level of over 4.6%, each 1% increase in HbA1c increased the risk of a heart attack by a huge 136%.
Long-term high glucose levels are, of course, only caused by eating a 'healthy', carbohydrate-rich diet. Thus the best way to avoid a heart attack is to avoid the plant-based foods that may cause it.
References
1. VACABSCSG. Eleven year survival in the veterans administration randomized trial of coronary bypass surgery for stable angina. New Eng J Med 1984 311; 1333-1339.
2. Willis GC. An Experimental Study of the Intimal Hemorrhages and in the Precipitation of Coronary Thrombi. Can Med Assoc J 1953; 69:17-22.
3. Brown MS, Goldstein JL. Michael S. Brown, MD and Joseph L. Goldstein, MD. 1985 Nobel laureates in medicine. J Investig Med 1996; 44: 14-23.
4. Saul GD. Arterial stress from intraluminal pressure modified by tissue pressure offers a complete explanation for the distribution of atherosclerosis. Med Hyp 1999; 52: 349-351.
5. Michalodimitrakis M, et al. Lessons learnt from the autopsies of 445 cases of sudden cardiac death in adults. Coron Art Dis 2005; 16(6):385-389.
6. Marchioli R, Barzi F, Bomba E, et al. Early protection against sudden death by n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids after myocardial infarction. Circulation 2002; 105: 1897-1903.
7. Selvin E, et al. Glycemic control, atherosclerosis, and risk factors for cardiovascular disease in individuals with diabetes: the atherosclerosis risk in communities study. Diabetes Care. 2005; 28: 1965-73.
Last updated 1 August 2008
Related Articles
