health and safety: High-fibre diet is heart-healthy

Saturday, February 23, 2008

High-fibre diet is heart-healthy

Here’s how you can keep strokes at bay

Fish oil won’t help prevent a stroke, but a highfibre diet might make a difference, say two new studies designed to assess the impact of nutrition on stroke. “Fish oils are not as good as people claim them to be,” said Dr Craig Anderson, lead author of the fish oil study and director of the neurological and mental health division at the George Institute for International Health at the University of Sydney, in Australia. On the other hand, “eating 20 to 35 grams of fibre per day may reduce the risk of stroke and may result in better outcomes if you do have a stroke,” said Angela Besanger, lead author of the fibre study and a nutritionist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Both studies were expected to be presented recenlty at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in New Orleans. Every year, more than 700,000 Americans have a stroke, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Stroke is the third-leading killer in the United States and is the leading cause of disability. Known risk factors for stroke include cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Past research has suggested that fish oil — either directly from fish or from supplements — could improve cardiovascular health and possibly decrease the risk of stroke. “From our research and on the basis of other data, I do not recommend lowmedium doses of fish oil to my patients. Conversely, though, I do not discourage them if they personally wish to take the treatment as it might encourage other lifestyle changes,” Anderson said.
The fibre study, which Besanger said is the first of its kind, included 50 people who’d just had a stroke. The researchers asked them to recall everything they’d eaten within 24 hours of having a stroke and compared that information to their disability level and general health at six months. They found that those with the highest levels of fibre intake had better outcomes, but study co-author Dr Karen Furie, director of the stroke service at Massachusetts General, pointed out that “this wasn’t a clinical trial. We didn’t give people fibre. The association was pretty dramatic, but this was a small sample size, and it’s only observational data. These findings need to be replicated in a larger study.” However, Furie also noted that a recommendation to increase the amount of fibre in your diet is “a recommendation that’s pretty easy to endorse. There are no downsides to increasing fibre intake.”