Diets worldwide that are rich in fried and salty foods increase heart attack risk, while eating lots of fruit, leafy greens and other vegetables reduces that risk, a study published yesterday showed.
The study, called INTERHEART, looked at 16,000 heart attack patients and controls between 1999 and 2003 in countries on every continent, marking a shift from previous studies, which have focused on the developed world.
The patients and controls filled in a “dietary risk score” questionnaire based on 19 food groups, which contained healthy and unhealthy items and were tweaked to include dietary preferences of each country taking part in the study.
The researchers found that people who eat a diet high in fried foods, salty snacks, eggs and meat — the “Western Diet” — had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack than people who consumed little or no fried foods or meat, regardless of where they live.
People who ate a “Prudent Diet” — high in leafy green vegetables, other raw and cooked vegetables, and fruits — had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack than those who ate little or no fruit and vegetables, the study showed.
The third dietary pattern, called the “Oriental Diet” because it contained foods such as tofu and soy sauce, which are typically consumed in Asian societies, was found to have little impact on heart attack risk. Although some items in the Oriental diet might have protective properties such as vitamins and anti-oxidants, others such as soy sauce have a high salt content that would negate the benefits, the study said.
The study was groundbreaking in its scope and because previous research had focused mainly on developed countries, according to Salim Yusuf, a senior author of the study.
“We had focused research on the West because heart disease was mainly predominant in Western countries 25 to 30 years ago,” Yusuf, who is a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Canada, said.
“But heart disease is now increasingly striking people in developing countries. Eighty percent of heart disease today is in low- to middle-income countries” partly because more people around the world are eating Western diets, he said.
“This study indicates that the same relationships that are observed in Western countries exist in different regions of the world,” said Yusuf, who is also head of the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario.
Patients who had been admitted to coronary care units in 262 centers around the world, and at least one control subject per patient, took part in the study.
The INTERHEART results were published yesterday in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.
The main countries in the study were Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia in South America; Canada and the US in North America; Sweden in western Europe; Croatia, Poland and Russia for eastern Europe; and Dubai, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait and Qatar for the Middle East.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the main countries were Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe; while nearly all the South Asian countries — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka — took part, as did Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines and Singapore, Yusuf said.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
RSS