How a veggie diet can protect your heart
Heart Pumping
Of all the complex jobs our bodies have to perform it sounds such a simple task to ask of our
hearts - just sit there and pump. Yes that really is it - the heart just sits around day in and day out pushing the blood around the body, thereby supplying individual cells with food and
oxygen. But we humans seem to be very adept at putting a spanner in the works of our pumping hearts. Not if you’re veggie though! Recent studies suggest that when compared with meat-eaters, vegetarians have a lower risk of dying from
heart disease by an incredible 25%! How so? Well a look at the many diet-related risk factors for heart
disease shows that a vegetarian diet can reduce many of these risks considerably.
Number Crunching
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the main cause of death in the UK with over 235,000 fatalities annually. The main forms of CVD are coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. Over 270,000 people suffer a heart attack each year with 125,000 of these dying. Cardiovascular disease also accounts for high levels of serious
morbidity (long-term illness) within the population. Half a million people have heart failure and around 1.5 million people suffer from
angina (chest pain on exertion) (2).
Major Risk Factors and the Veggie Perspective
The major risk factors for CHD include
smoking, lack of
exercise,
stress, high alcohol intake, a poorly balanced diet, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, being overweight and diabetes.
Vegetarian diets are composed of the sorts of foods that have been shown over many years to help normalise many of the risk factors cited above.
Cholesterol Levels
Too much saturated fat in the diet encourages the body to increase
cholesterol levels - a major risk factor for CHD. Meat and dairy are major sources of saturated fat - vegetarian and vegans diets automatically reduce this type of fat in the diet The most powerful
cholesterol-lowering agents are all found exclusively in plant foods - such as soluble fibre (eg oats, fruits and vegetables) and plant protein (eg soya). Of the two types of
cholesterol - LDL and
HDL -
LDL has long been considered the most detrimental to artery health since it is directly deposited on artery walls. Recent evidence however suggests that LDL is mainly problematic to blood vessels when the LDL is damaged (oxidized). The damaged LDL stored on the inside of the arteries causes the arteries to narrow which can result in heart disease. The body’s defence against damage to LDL is
antioxidants primarily the vitamins beta-carotene (the precursor to vitamin A and only found in plant foods), vitamins C and E (vitamins similarly only found in plant foods), selenium and zinc. No surprise then that studies show vegetarians have higher antioxidant levels than meat-eaters and a recent study suggests that vegetarian diets decrease the susceptibility of LDL to damage!
Homocysteine
A new risk factor for heart disease -
homocysteine - has recently been discovered. Homocysteine (Hcy) is an
amino acid (building block of protein) produced by the body during the breakdown of another amino acid -
methionine. High levels of Hcy have been linked to increased risk for
heart disease and
stroke -possibly by causing lesions in the blood vessels which can lead to a narrowing of the arteries. Ensuring adequate intakes of three key
B-vitamins is crucial in lowering Hcy levels.
Folate and
vitamin B6 are found abundantly in plant foods, and vitamin B12 is found in fortified foods with a daily intake of 3 micrograms per day now being recommended (5,6). This can be provided by, for example, an average 250ml serving of fortified soya milk, plus an average 50g serving of fortified cereal and a couple of pieces of toast spread with B12 fortified margarine and B12 fortified yeast extract.
Blood Pressure
Hypertension increases the tendency for blockages to form in the arteries. Once again vegetarians come up trumps. Vegetarians suffer much less from hypertension than omnivores and adopting a meat-free diet can lower blood pressure . Hypertension is described as the silent killer - most people don’t even know they have the condition. Encouraging the adoption of a plant-based diet would be a major step in reducing the incidence of this condition.
