Women's Heart Attack Risk: New Study

I know, they're always coming out with new articles about what we should and shouldn't do to improve our health, but you have to pay attention to research findings as they are published. If you keep hearing the same conclusions from separate studies over and over again, perhaps there's some validity to what they're suggesting.


I'd like to pass on to the women in my life that the journal "Archives of Internal Medicine" published the results in the October 22, 2007 issue showing that women who led a healthy lifestyle (not smoking, having a waist-hip ratio of less than the 75th percentile, being physically active) along with a diet characterized by a high intake
of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fish and legumes had a 92 % decreased risk of heart disease compared with women without this low-risk diet and healthy lifestyle factors. I know, I know, it sounds like a no-brainer, but the result suggests that this may prevent 77% of heart attacks in women.
The scientists note that many components of fruit, vegetables and whole grains, including fiber, antioxidant vitamins and minerals, have been linked to a lower risk of coronary heart disease. The conclusion was that these dietary behaviors together with a healthy lifestyle and body weight may prevent most heart attacks.
To be fair, they also included a moderate intake of alcohol (less than 5 grams per day) since previous studies had also found that small quantities of alcohol helped prevent the accumulation of plaque in the arteries. The problem with that is that there have been multiple studies that have shown a link between a woman's alcohol intake and her increased risk of breast cancer. I don't drink alcohol anyway, but I'm not willing to ingest a substance that may help one disease if it increases the chances of another.