DASH Diet Promotes Healthy Heart

DASH diet can reduce risk of coronary heart disease and stroke according to a new study.

According to a recent Nurses' Health Study, those who routinely consumed a diet as close as possible to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diets have less risk for coronary heart disease.

The recent study began in 1980 with 88,517 female nurses, whose ages ranged from 34 to 59. None of them had diabetes or cardiovascular disease at the start of the study. They reported their typical dietary fare seven times over the course of 24 years, with each report reflecting their dietary habits from each previous year.

Researchers then analyzed their diets and assigned them a DASH score according to their intake of eight foods and nutritional factors. The higher the DASH score, the better the diet. A high score meant a diet that included plenty of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and whole grains and consumption of low-fat dairy products in quantities close to the recommended dietary guidelines. Consumption of processed and red meats, sodium, and sweetened beverages led to lower scores.

High DASH scores have been proven to lower both systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings in previous studies, even in patients with high blood pressure. The DASH diet is also linked to a reduction in low-density lipoproteins cholesterol. Both deciding factors lead to a reduced risk of stroke and heart disease.

During the study, 2,317 nurses had strokes, 2,129 suffered non-fatal heart attacks, and 976 succumbed to coronary heart disease. To isolate the influence of the DASH diets, study participants were placed in five groups according to DASH score. The one-fifth of nurses with the highest scores were 24 2.178961e-263ss likely to experience coronary heart disease and were 18-5.983639e-01ss prone to have strokes than the nurses who scored in the bottom one-fifth.

Blood samples revealed that the nurses in the higher DASH score groups had the lowest levels of interleukin 6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP), the two compounds that signal inflammation associated with heart disease.