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Thu 1 Jul, 2004 03:14 pm
Quote:'Western' Diet Raises Stroke Risk - U.S. StudyAdd stroke to the list of health problems caused by a Western diet rich in red meat, white flour and sugar, researchers said on Thursday.A study of more than 71,000 nurses found those who ate a "prudent" diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, legumes and whole grains were less likely to have strokes than nurses eating a more typical American diet.
Writing in the journal Stroke, the team at the Harvard School of Public Health said its study was the first to examine overall dietary habits and stroke risk.
Health experts already say a diet high in animal fat, especially red meat, and low in fiber, fruits and vegetables raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and obesity.
Stroke is the third-leading cause of death in the United States, killing nearly 170,000 people in 2003.
"Several foods and nutrients have been linked to the risk of stroke; therefore, dietary modification may be an important way to reduce the risk of stroke," said Teresa Fung, an assistant professor of nutrition at Simmons College School for Health Studies in Boston, who led the study.
"Because nutrients and food are consumed in combination, their cumulative effect on disease risk may be best investigated by considering the entire eating pattern."
The researchers began studying 71,768 female nurses aged 38 to 63 in 1984 who had no history of heart disease or diabetes. They followed them until 1998, dividing them into two groups -- "prudent" and "Western" eaters.
Each group was further divided into fifths, depending on a woman's reported eating pattern.
There were 791 strokes during the 14-year study period.
The women who ate the "worst" Western diet had a 58 percent higher risk of stroke than women who ate the healthiest diets.
The nurses with Western eating habits were also more likely to smoke, less likely to take vitamins and to be less active, the researchers found.
Source
Link to 'Stroke'
i assume that the recommendation of the german BUNDESVERBRAUCHERUNGSMINISTERIN (try saying this three times !) renate kuenast, to apply the full salestax of 16% on the beloved german CURRYWURST(rather than the reduced rate of 7% for foodstuff) has at least partially been prompted by the "western" diet scare. the article in the german news was actually quite funny; it showed the minister chomping on a currywurst while musing of the possible tax-increase(she was probably offering herself up as a human testcase to prove the danger of the currywurst). BUNDESVERBRAUCHERMINISTERIN = minister of consumer affairs(canadian equivalent). phoned my brother-in-law in germany; we had a good laugh about the "CURRYWURST TAX". hbg
High fat diet leads to elevated cholesterol levels, plugged up arteries, stroke, heart disease and often cancer.
High salt leads to hypertension, diabetes, heart disease...etc.
You can eat cabbages, and I love cabbages.
so this article says, overall, if your entire lifestyle is full of prudent habits then your stroke risk is lower. They have not isolated any individual risk elements. If the newspaper is correct in its reporting(and I always worry
about this) then the stroke risk is a combination of cumulative factors , not just diet.
This is an epidemic. Americans' health will soon surpass the lows of third world countries, IMO.
Obesity is increasing alarmingly fast. Our diets (general population) are horrible. When I was working, I had to travel by car frequently, and was forced to eat fast food. I gained weight, was too stressed to work out after work, and was so tired all the time. My children ate 'fast' meals too, with little nutritional value.
When I was able to, I changed those habits, and feel better and look much better.
This Low Carb thing is good, but avoiding carbs isn't the whole thing. We have to start eating fruit and fresh veggies--and get our kids turned on as well.
If not, I think a future study in American Exceptionalism will focus on how we succeeded economically in part, because of a high work ethic, and ultimately failed, because our work ethic (long hours, two salaried households) ruined our health.
News reports are piling data on us all the time. We are an unhealthy nation, IMO.
By hunger and headache, smarty pants.
When travelling for five to six hours in a day, either you ate in the car, or didn't eat at all. If I'd had time to stop travelling, and sit down, waiting for a healthier meal to be cooked and served, I would have done so.
If I don't eat for seven or eight hours, I get a headache. A bad one.
No martians held me at laser-point, and force fed me a Big Mac.
satt_focusable wrote:You can eat cabbages, and I love cabbages.
Too much cabbage leads to thyroid problems + goiters.
Fast food now and then is probably not going to hurt your health too much.
miller wrote : "Too much cabbage leads to thyroid problems + goiters. " ... am also aware of some other "side-effects" that can occur when eating too much cabbage ! i guess, moderation in just about everything is a prudent thing. mrs. h and i picked quite a batch of strawberries earlier this week. we have been having fresh strawberries in the afternoon and we do like some icecream with it. so that we won't over-indulge in the icecream, mrs h has bought a box of icecream bars; each bar is about 3 ounces. we manage to cut each bar into quarters and we have a quarter each with our icecream. so we can enjoy some icecream with our strawberries without overdoing it. oh, why can't we have fresh ontario strawberries year-round (same goes for aspargus !). we did manage to freeze about thirty quarts; that should keep us in hog-heaven for a while. hbg
Sounds heavenly.
<No farting.>
Why was this study only performed on Nurses?
Portal, many studies have been done on nurses, and damned if I know, except that it is an apparent relatively stable and accessible and 'smart enough to begin to trust the answers' population.
When I worked in a research lab, it was me who volunteered my blood often to make slides as a substrate for tests, and it was most of us, whoever was around, who volunteered as normals for this and that paper.
And many, if not most, (social) psychological research is done with university students. They are a captive population. But because they are mostly of the same class (enjoying situational benefits less available to the lower classes) the samples may be seriously skewed, IMO.
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