Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular risk factors

Posted on April 20, 2008
Filed Under Diet, Heart Disease |

Further evidence of the benefits of Mediterranean diet
Diseases of the heart and blood vessels are the leading cause of death in industrialized countries, but its incidence shows marked geographical differences. Its low incidence in Mediterranean countries has been attributed, at least in part to dietary habits.

Recent research suggests that adopting a Mediterranean diet is often associated with a reduction in the number of deaths of people who follow it. Various facts and testify and has determined that this type of diet has a protective effect in this regard.

In summary
Patients undergoing a Mediterranean diet have been beneficial changes in most measured parameters:

# Blood pressure,
# Sugar levels,
# Cholesterol and
# C-reactive protein
Olive oil, an important ingredient of the Mediterranean diet contains fats with beneficial properties such as those with nuts, another typical product of our diet.

Spanish authors of this paper designed a large clinical trial on food in people at high risk for evaluating the effects of two Mediterranean diets, one supplemented with virgin olive oil and nuts with the other, compared with a diet low in fat on the cardiovascular outcomes.

It is envisaged that some 9,000 people involved with high cardiovascular risk, which will be randomly assigned to any of the 3 interventions: Mediterranean diet with virgin olive oil, Mediterranean diet with nuts and low fat diet. Will investigate whether the participants have some type of cardiovascular events such as death, myocardial infarction or non-fatal stroke or non-fatal stroke.

Analyzed the first 772 participants aged between 55 and 80 years, the results show that the two Mediterranean diets produced beneficial changes in most parameters measured (blood pressure and sugar levels, cholesterol and C-reactive protein, an indicator of inflammation in the blood) compared with diet low in fat.

This study can not yet deliver death or cardiovascular complications.

The authors conclude that their study of Mediterranean diets, supplemented with virgin olive oil or nuts have beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk factors compared with the diet low in fat.

Although we knew that our Mediterranean diet is heart, now we have new evidence to continue to eat our traditional Mediterranean products.

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