April 15th, 2008
How good is the DASH diet?
Pretty good.
DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The idea was that by eating only a little meat, a little dairy, and mostly plants, you could cut your risk for heart attack or stroke.
You’ll remember the DASH diet from that lovely food pyramid the FDA created back in the 1990s (above). (This pyramid is on Fitness & Freebies.)
A 24-year study of the diet is now out, with the headline being this cuts your risk 24%. (The full study is printed in the Archives of Internal Medicine.)
Over 88,000 otherwise-healthy nurses were studied, with follow-ups concerning their adherence to the diet done every two years. Results were divided into fifths, or quintiles, giving each a “DASH score” from which conclusions were drawn.
But here’s the interesting part, from a press release on the study.
The few women who were smokers and those who had high blood pressure appeared to benefit the most from being in the highest quintile, compared to nonsmokers and women with normal blood pressure, respectively.
Smokers benefitted more from a low-fat, high-fiber diet than nonsmokers, and those with high blood pressure benefitted more than those with normal pressure.
Maybe tobacco counts as a plant.
While the major media will generalize from this that everyone should be on a low-fat, high-plant diet (yech, I know) I find the idea that smokers cut their risks most with this diet fascinating.
Do you?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to ZDNet Healthcare via Email alerts or RSS.
