Healthy Diet Helps Prevent Future Heart Attack

In that diet quality is strongly related to cardiovascular disease incidence, researchers involved in two clinical studies involving a total of 31,546 men and women, average age 66.5 years, sought to elucidate the role of diet on future cardiovascular events in people at-risk and receiving medication for secondary prevention.  The research group reported that their analysis of two cohorts of patients with cardiovascular disease or diabetes showed that subjects who consumed the healthiest diet had a significantly lower risk of further cardiovascular events, as compared to those whose ate the poorest quality diet.  The benefits were seen regardless of the type of medications that patients were taking. Writing that: “A higher-quality diet was associated with a lower risk of recurrent [cardiovascular disease] events among people 55 years of age [and older] with [cardiovascular disease] or diabetes mellitus,” the study authors urge that: “Highlighting the importance of healthy eating by health professionals would substantially reduce [cardiovascular disease] recurrence and save lives globally.”