Category: Heart Disease

If you can finish this test in less than 60 seconds then your heart is healthy.

One test of good heart health is simple, it just requires climbing a flight of stairs.

According to a study, if it takes you less than one minute to go up four flights of sitars without stopping, then your heart is healthy.

An example would be climbing up from the bottom floor to the fourth floor in an office building in under a minute.

Dr Jesús Peteiro, the study’s author, said:

“The stairs test is an easy way to check your heart health.

If it takes you more than one-and-a-half minutes to ascend four flights of stairs, your health is suboptimal, and it would be a good idea to consult a doctor.”

The study wanted to find out a practical and cheap way that could give people an indication of heart health.

Dr Peteiro said:

“The idea was to find a simple and inexpensive method of assessing heart health.

This can help physicians triage patients for more extensive examinations.”

The research engaged a group of patients who were assigned for exercise testing due to the probability of having coronary artery disease.

Shortness of breath or chest pain through the exercise would indicate the disease.

Patients ran or walked on a treadmill while the intensity of exercise bit by bit was increased until they reached exhaustion.

A metabolic equivalents (METs) test was used to measure patients’ exercise capacity, which is the highest level of physical exertion that a person can maintain.

Once they rested for 15 to 20 minutes, they were asked to walk up 60 stairs, similar to four flights.

They were asked not to stop or run but had to climb briskly while the time was noted.

The study found that participants who took at least 40 to 45 seconds to climb the stairs scored 9 to 10 or higher METs.

Past studies found that people who scored 10 METs during an exercise test had one percent lower death rate in a year or ten percent in 10 years.

Conversely, those who scored less than 8 METs due to taking 90 seconds or longer, were 30 percent more likely to die in 10 years.

In addition, the images taken of the patients’ hearts through the treadmill exercise were examined to see if their heart functioned  normally — a good indication of a lower chance of having a coronary artery disease.

This finding was then compared to the scores which were obtained from climbing the stairs.

About 58 percent of those who did the climbing task who took longer than 90 seconds also had an irregular heart rhythm throughout the treadmill exercise test.

In comparison, only 32 percent of those who completed the climbing task within 60 seconds had an irregular heart rhythm.

Dr Peteiro added that the association between exercise capacity (i.e. METs) and stair climbing is applicable to the population.

However, the linking up of death rate with heart function by imaging is better for individuals who may have or are at risk of coronary artery disease.

The study was presented at EACVI – Best of Imaging 2020, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

Women are more likely to develop heart disease than men if they keep eating these specific foods.

Women have different eating patterns with men which can either be good or bad for cardiovascular health depending on what they eat.

Men typically eat three times daily but women eat five times a day as women like to nibble and tend to snack more often.

A study has found that women have higher heart disease risk if they snack on unhealthy plant-based foods.

However, the risk falls dramatically if women snacked on healthful plant-based foods compared to men on a healthy plant-based diet.

This suggests that consuming a plant-based diet — if it contains less healthy foods like refined grains, juices, and sweets — can be bad for the heart as much as junk food.

Nowadays, plant-based diets due to their heart health benefits, are more attractive than at any other time, but the positive effect of this dietary pattern mainly depends on certain foods.

Professor Demosthenes Panagiotakos, the study’s lead author, said:

“Based on these results, it seems that simply following a plant-based or vegetarian diet is not enough to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

It is also important to focus on specific, healthful plant-based food groups to see a benefit in terms of reducing cardiovascular disease.”

The study examined the link between eating patterns and developing heart disease on 2,000 Greek adults over 10 years.

Participants were divided into different groups, depending on the number of foods from animal source they ate every day.

Products such as meat, cheese, yoghurt, milk and eggs were considered animal-based foods.

The results showed that the odds of developing cardiovascular disease was reduced by 25 percent for men who consumed fewer animal-based foods while this beneficial effect was only 11 percent for women.

Participants who followed a less plant-based diet, generally, ate five animal-based foods every day whereas those on more plant-based foods ate three animal products.

Professor Panagiotakos said:

“These findings highlight that even a small reduction in the daily consumption of animal-based products — principally the less healthy foods, such as processed meat products — accompanied by an increase in healthy plant-based foods may contribute to better cardiovascular health.”

The research team then focused on the subjects who consumed higher amounts of plant-based foods.

This time participant’s diet was divided into either healthful or unhealthful foods.

A healthful diet consisted of a higher intake of whole grains, vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, and coffee or tea.

A unhealthful diet consisted of high consumptions of sweetened drinks, juices, potatoes, sweets, and refined grains.

Compared to men, the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease amongst women was much higher when snacking on an unhealthful plant-based foods.

Women’s risk for cardiovascular disease was reduced more impressively than men, by following a healthful plant-based diet.

Professor Panagiotakos concluded:

“In the future, I believe it will be useful if cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines offer clearer and specific nutrition suggestions, in terms of the types of foods that are recommended and the portions that should be consumed.”

The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology, March 2020.

This simple pleasure could reduce the risk of dying from heart disease and stroke.

Taking a bath might lower the likelihood of death related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) including sudden cardiac arrest, heart attack, and stroke, but the protective effect relies on the number of baths.

Taking baths every day appears to show more benefit than bathing even four times a week.

This simple pleasure has long been known to improve sleep quality and increase how healthy people feel.

However, the impacts of bathing on CVD risk have not been studied until now.

For this reason a study in Japan tracked 61,000 middle aged adults for nearly 20 years.

The results showed that a daily hot bath can reduce the risk of CVD by 28 percent and the risk of stroke by 26 percent when compared to having a bath once or twice a week.

The authors of the study wrote:

“We found that frequent tub bathing was significantly associated with a lower risk of hypertension, suggesting that a beneficial effect of tub bathing on risk of [cardiovascular disease] may in part be due to a reduced risk of developing hypertension.”

The study examined whether water temperature described as hot, warm, or lukewarm makes any significant difference.

To bathe with hot water indicated a 35 percent lower risk of CVD and 26 percent reduction of risk when warm water was used.

However, water temperature didn’t make any difference for stroke risk.

The Japanese style of bathing typically involves filling the tub with water at 40°C to shoulder height.

The danger of having a hot bath is that it can cause heat stroke if the temperature is too high.

Dr Andrew Felix Burden, commenting on this study, wrote:

“There can be no doubt about the potential dangers of bathing in hot water, and the occurrence of death from this increases with age, as well as with the temperature of the water.”

According to Dr Burden, it is unlikely that cardiovascular disease itself is the reason for these death as overheating could cause confusion and so drowning.

The study was published in the journal Heart (Ukai et al., 2020).

One cup a day of vegetables that contain this active component lowers heart disease.

Daily consumption of one cup of nitrate-rich vegetables enhances cardiovascular health and muscle strength.

A moderate vegetable intake (60 mg per day) has been shown to lower the risk of heart related diseases by at least 15 percent.

A high vegetable nitrate intake (141 mg per day) has been shown to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure by 2.5 mmHg and 1.4 mmHg respectively.

A study of 53,150 adults over 23 years found that people who ate high amounts of nitrate-rich vegetables, such as beetroot and leafy greens, had significantly lower blood pressure and were less likely to develop CVD years later.

CVD is the biggest killer worldwide, responsible for one-third of deaths each year.

A healthy diet, exercise, and a low stress lifestyle are the ways to prevent or reduce the risk of CVD.

Several studies suggest that dietary nitrate sources can lower blood pressure and risk of incident CVD significantly.

Dr Catherine Bondonno and colleagues who did the current study believe that identifying diets capable of preventing heart disease should take priority.

Dr Bondonno, the study’s first author, said:

“Our results have shown that by simply eating one cup of raw (or half a cup of cooked) nitrate-rich vegetables each day, people may be able to significantly reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease.

The greatest reduction in risk was for peripheral artery disease (26 percent), a type of heart disease characterized by the narrowing of blood vessels of the legs, however we also found people had a lower risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure.

Don’t need supplements

One cup of green leafy vegetables contains almost 60 mg of nitrates, an level equivalent to moderate nitrate intake.

The results show that eating one cup of leafy greens reduced the risk of ischemic heart disease by 12 percent, heart failure by 15 percent, ischemic stroke by 17 percent, and peripheral artery disease by 26 percent.

Consuming more than one cup of nitrate-rich vegetables or topping up with nitrate supplements confers no further benefits.

Dr Bondonno said:

“People don’t need to be taking supplements to boost their nitrate levels because the study showed that one cup of leafy green vegetables each day is enough to reap the benefits for heart disease.

We did not see further benefits in people who ate higher levels of nitrate rich vegetables.”

Dr Bondonno recommends adding a cup of  dark leafy greens such as spinach to a berry or banana smoothie but not juicing it up.

“Blending leafy greens is fine, but don’t juice them. Juicing vegetables removes the pulp and fiber.”

The study was published in the European Journal of Epidemiology (Bondonno et al., 2021).

A high calorie-dense food that is rich in nutrients promoting heart health.

Eating nuts has been shown to reduce cardiovascular disease incidence and death due to heart attacks and strokes.

Adding a handful of unsalted nuts to your everyday diet could indeed protect you from heart disease.

Pistachios, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and other nuts are rich source of antioxidants like polyphenols and phytosterols that improve heart health.

A study found that people who eat nuts two times or more weekly are 17 percent less likely to die from heart disease.

Dr Noushin Mohammadifard, the study’s lead author, said:

“Nuts are a good source of unsaturated fat and contain little saturated fat.

They also have protein, minerals, vitamins, fibre, phytosterols, and polyphenols which benefit heart health.

European and US studies have related nuts with cardiovascular protection but there is limited evidence from the Eastern Mediterranean Region.”

The research focuses on the link between eating nuts and heart diseases risk amongst people in Iran.

The research team enrolled 5,432 participants aged 35 and older who had no history of heart disease.

They used a validated food frequency questionnaire to measure the levels of nut intake, including almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, and seeds.

For 12 years, participants were interviewed to record and investigate cardiovascular issues including coronary heart disease, heart attacks, stroke, and death from cardiovascular disorders.

During this period, there were 594 coronary heart disease deaths, 179 cardiovascular deaths, and 157 strokes.

According to the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), a healthy diet should contain 30 grams of unsalted nuts daily.

This study proves that people who consume nuts twice or more per week would notably have a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disorders than those who eat nuts occasionally.

Dr Mohammadifard siad:

“Raw fresh nuts are the healthiest.

Nuts should be fresh because unsaturated fats can become oxidised in stale nuts, making them harmful.

You can tell if nuts are rancid by their paint-like smell and bitter or sour taste.”

The study was presented at the ESC Congress with the World Congress of Cardiology (Mohammadifard et al., 2019).

Having 3 servings a day of this food helps weight loss, lowers blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

Eating whole grains could reduce cardiovascular disease and cardiometabolic risk factors in adults.

Eating at least three servings of whole grains per day is linked to smaller waist size, reduced blood sugar, and lower blood pressure.

Diet modification, such as replacing refined grains with whole grain foods, is an effective way to reduce abdominal fat, blood pressure, dyslipidemia (abnormal level of cholesterol and other lipids), and hyperglycemia (high blood sugar levels).

A study shows that people who consumed a higher intake of whole grain foods were able to reduce five heart disease risk factors: blood pressure, waist size, blood sugar, triglyceride, and LDL cholesterol levels.

The study looked at health outcomes related to eating whole- and refined-grains among middle- to older-age adults for 18 years.

Participants were sorted based on their whole grain intake into different groups; from less than a half serving daily (low intake) to three or more servings a day (high intake).

The team assessed the effect of whole grain consumption on five risk factors of heart disease every four years.

• The low intake group saw over one inch increase in waist size while this was less than half an inch for the high intake group.
• Those in the low intake group saw an increase in systolic blood pressure and blood sugar levels compared to the high intake.

The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend eating three or more servings per day of whole grains.

A serving, for instance, is a half-cup of brown rice, one slice of dark whole wheat bread, or a half-cup of rolled oats.

Dr Nicola McKeown, the study’s co-author, said:

“Our findings suggest that eating whole-grain foods as part of a healthy diet delivers health benefits beyond just helping us lose or maintain weight as we age.

In fact, these data suggest that people who eat more whole grains are better able to maintain their blood sugar and blood pressure over time.

Managing these risk factors as we age may help to protect against heart disease.”

Dr Caleigh Sawicki, the study’s first author, said:

“There are several reasons that whole grains may work to help people maintain waist size and reduce increases in the other risk factors.

The presence of dietary fiber in whole grains can have a satiating effect, and the magnesium, potassium, and antioxidants may contribute to lowering blood pressure.

Soluble fiber in particular may have a beneficial effect on post-meal blood sugar spikes.”

Whole grain breakfast cereals and whole-wheat breads contributed the largest part of participants’ whole grain intake, while white bread and pasta were the largest intake of refined grains.

Processing methods leave refined grains poor in nutrients and high in starch.

Whole grains are rich in fibre and contain B vitamins, minerals, protein, and some healthy fats.

Dr Nicola McKeown said:

“The average American consumes about five servings of refined grains daily, much more than is recommended, so it’s important to think about ways to replace refined grains with whole grains throughout your day.

For example, you might consider a bowl of whole-grain cereal instead of a white flour bagel for breakfast and replacing refined-grain snacks, entrees, and side dishes with whole-grain options.

Small incremental changes in your diet to increase whole-grain intake will make a difference over time.”

The study was published in The Journal of Nutrition (Sawicki et al., 2021).

People with high blood pressure could reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease by adding this food to their diet.

Eating more yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease in people with hypertension, a study has found.

Two servings or more per week of yogurt could lower risks of heart disease or stroke by more than 20 percent.

High blood pressure affects more than 1 billion people globally and is a primary risk factor for heart disease.

Several clinical trials have been shown that consuming dairy can improve cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of hypertension, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes.

But now experts say that yogurt alone can lower hypertension and cardiovascular disease risk.

They analysed the dietary intake of 55,000 women and 18,000 men with high blood pressure.

They found that participants who consumed 2 servings or more per week of yogurt had a 20 percent reduced chance of coronary heart disease.

One serving is equivalent to one cup of yogurt, which is about 8 fluid ounces or 220 millilitre.

Consumption of at least 2 servings per week of yogurt was linked to a 30 percent reduction of heart attack (myocardial infarction) in women and a 19 percent reduction in men.

Overall, regular consumption of yogurt in combination with a healthy diet, such as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, leads to a larger decline in cardiovascular disease risk in those with high blood pressure.

Mr Justin Buendia, the study’s first author, said:

“We hypothesized that long-term yogurt intake might reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems since some previous small studies had shown beneficial effects of fermented dairy products.

Here, we had a very large cohort of hypertensive men and women, who were followed for up to 30 years.

Our results provide important new evidence that yogurt may benefit heart health alone or as a consistent part of a diet rich in fiber-rich fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension (Buendia et al., 2018).

Omega-3 fatty acids work differently: one is more effective in reducing inflammation and the other is more important in preventing heart disease.

The omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which are mainly found in oily fish have been known for their protective effect against chronic inflammation, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and some cancers.

However, according to a study, EPA and DHA operate differently to help the immune system and produce different anti-inflammatory actions.

This clinical trail investigated the outcomes of EPA and DHA supplementations on obese adults with chronic inflammation for a period of 34 weeks.

Participants received 3 grams a day of either pure EPA or pure DHA with a wash-out period.

Although both DHA and EPA have been found to lower heart disease risk by decreasing inflammation, DHA in this study seemed to have a more pronounced anti-inflammatory effect compared to EPA.

EPA supplementation reduced the gene expression of only one type of pro-inflammatory proteins (cytokines) whereas DHA reduced four types.

EPA on the other hand was more effective in balancing pro- and anti-inflammatory proteins.

Dr Stefania Lamon-Fava, study co-author, said:

“The jury has been out, so to speak, on how the two major components of fish oil work — and whether one might be better than the other.

These results suggest that DHA is the more powerful of the two on markers of inflammation in the body, but that’s not the end of the story.”

Ms Jisun So, the study’s first author, said:

“In our bodies, there is always this balance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory proteins, and we found EPA was better than DHA at enhancing that balance.

For the prevention of cardiovascular disease, previous research tells us that balance is very important.”

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends eating 4 ounces (114 g) of seafood twice a week .

Trout, salmon, sardines, tuna, mackerel, herring, anchovies, and oysters contain good amounts of omega-3 fatty acids.

Dr Stefania Lamon-Fava concluded:

“Our study gives us a snapshot of how EPA and DHA may work to reduce chronic inflammation, and how each has distinct effects.

Our results provide insight for future research to explore why that is the case and who would benefit from one or both of these healthy fats.”

The study was published in the journal Atherosclerosis (So et al., 2020).