MOSES had his stone tablet with the 10 commandments. Here’s a different set of commandments:
These are the 10 dietary commandments you should follow if you want a healthy heart, says cardiologist David M. Colquhoun, who is also University of Queensland associate professor of medicine.
The cardiologist, who has been doing clinical research on cardiovascular diseases for more than 20 years, says diet can prevent heart and blood vessel disease.
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Dr David Colquhoun |
Diet plays a role in making Okinawans in Japan the longest living people in the world. Their life expectancy for a male is 77.1 and females 82. The reason for their longevity, says Dr Colquhoun, is their healthy food, a fusion of east and west – rice, seaweed, tofu (east) and tomatoes, sweet potato, pork (west) and fish, leafy vegetables (east and west).
The Mediterranean diet also helps in reducing the chances of heart and blood vessel diseases, he says. Using the definition of Ancel Keys, the nutritionist who popularised the diet, Dr Colquhoun describes it as “pasta in many forms, leaves sprinkled with olive oil, all kinds of vegetables in season, and often cheese, all finished off with fruit, and frequently washed down wine.”
Diet can also cause heart and blood vessel disease, Dr Colquhoun said in his press briefing on Clinically Proven Nutrients To Prevent Heart and Blood Vessel Related Conditions.
The Malaysian diet has changed in the past 30 years and concomitant to this is the increase of vascular diseases in the population. The heart disease rate was very low in Malaysia between 1960 and 1965 compared to now, the cardiologist says.
The increase is due to lifestyle changes among Malaysians. “This is because there was no fast food then and over-eating is the trend now,” he says, adding that the risk factors for vascular diseases are biological (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, diabetes, obesity and lack of exercise) and psychological (depression and social isolation).
To stress his point, Dr Colquhoun quotes World Health Organisation director-general Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland: “The rapid growing epidemic of non-communicable diseases (obesity, diabetes, vascular disease) already responsible for some 60% of world deaths, is clearly related to changes in global dietary patterns and increased consumption of industrially processed fatty, salty and sugary foods.”
Besides diet, exercise and drugs, nutraceuticals, says Dr Colquhoun, can also lower the risk factors for heart and blood vessel disease, which is the number one killer in most industrialised countries including Malaysia.
How do you define a nutraceutical? The term was invented in 1979 by S. De Felice as “a food or part of a food and provides health or medical benefits, including the prevention and/or treatment of disease. Such products may range from isolated nutrients, dietary supplements, and diets to genetically engineered designer food, herbal products ?”
“The next step after lifestyle mesures to control risk factors is nutritional supplementation,” Dr Colquhoun says. “Certain supplements are indicated for all patients with vascular disease or at high risk of developing vascular disease.”
One example the cardiologist gives for a nutraceutical that works is guggulipid. Guggulipid is a gum exudate of mukul myrrh (Commiphora myrrh). “A dose of 50mg to 200mg/day can result in serum cholesterol decreasing by 14-27%. In addition, triglycerides (the chemical form in which most fat exists in food as well as in the body) decrease by 25-30%, and LDL decreases (bad cholesterol) by 20%. Such decreases may aid in weight loss and may even prevent angina,” he says.
Dr Colquhoun says that after a heart attack, he has asked his patients to consider certain nutraceuticals to prevent further attacks. He recommends fish oil, as his experience showed that it decreases the death rate from heart disease by 20% in two years. “Fish oil lowers triglycerides up to 80% and decreases sudden death by 45%,” he adds.
The other nutraceuticals recommended by Dr Colquhoun include:
Asked on how to choose among the many nutritional supplements that are available in the market, Dr Coquhoun recommends that people should seek medical advice.
“Your doctor should be up-to-date with his/her knowledge on nutritional supplements,” he notes.
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