A healthy diet is one important lifestyle strategy for lowering CVD risk factors, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and ultimately preventing atherosclerotic heart disease, or the hardening and narrowing of the arteries caused by fatty buildup, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming over 800,000 lives each year.
A healthy diet is one important lifestyle strategy for lowering CVD risk factors, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and ultimately preventing atherosclerotic heart disease, or the hardening and narrowing of the arteries caused by fatty buildup, which can lead to heart attack and stroke.
However, there is a scarcity of data to help patients decide which heart-healthy diet to follow.
In a new study, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) compared the effects of three eating patterns on patients’ risk of experiencing a cardiovascular event within in the next ten years — the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and the Western diet that is typically low in fruits and vegetables while high in fat and sodium.
The team’s findings suggest that while the DASH and fruit/vegetable diet each reduced risk scores by about 10 per cent over an eight-week period, the DASH diet conferred additional benefits for women and Black adults compared to Western Diet.
The results are published in the American Journal of Cardiology.
“While physicians and patients rely on the extensive data available when choosing appropriate pharmacologic therapy to prevent atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, there’s limited evidence to inform expectations for risk reductions from established lifestyle interventions,” said corresponding author Stephen P. Jurashcek, MD, PhD, a clinician-researcher in the Department of Medicine at BIDMC.