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Medicine is to heal from the inside

Diet that Protect from Heart Disease

Modern civilization recently has brought us to a new lifesytle that we called it sedentary lifestyle. With the technology, someone don't need to waste time and less physical activity. This lifestyle is associated with increased of degenerative disease, such as cardiovascular disease, and stroke.
Heart Disease


During the last few decades, the technology, and peaceful condition, life expectancy has increased significantly. This also caused a problem, since the increased of elderly populations, the prevalence of degenerative diseases also increased.

The increased of degenerative diseases has become the concern in medicine. Therefore a lot of scientific study are done, whether about its treatment, diagnostic, and prevention.

The prevention of the disease is one of the important part of disease management. Keeping the man to be stay healthy is easier than treat a man that already has a disease.
Disease isn't simple problem for someone, in some situations the person lost his/her productivity, and increased of dependency, such as in stroke and heart failure.

Nowadays, our understanding about stroke and cardiovascular disease have already improved, but not yet complete. Lot of researchs still need to be done. Recently on March 2011, there was a publication of study about diet and stroke incidence. This study is about identifying protective factors of stroke and cardiovascular diseases.

"A diet rich in foods that are loaded with potassium can reduce your risk for a stroke by 21 percent and may also lower your risk of heart disease, a new study suggests".


Good sources of potassium include bananas and other fruits and vegetables, as well as fish, poultry and dairy, the researchers noted.
And ounce per ounce, sweet potato and tomato paste top the list, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The average dietary potassium intake in most countries worldwide is much lower than recommended by health authorities, and increasing potassium intake may provide protection against stroke and other cardiovascular disorders,"

They found that people who consumed 1.64 grams of potassium or more a day had a 21 percent lower risk of stroke and also tended to have a lower risk of any cardiovascular disease.
Potassium Rich Foods

That five or more servings of fruits and vegetables will provide the amount of potassium needed to get this protective effect. The protective effect of potassium against the risk of stroke and other vascular events may in part be traced to its blood pressure-lowering effect, particularly in hypertensive individuals and in those with elevated sodium intake.

Potassium may be involved in slowing the process of atherosclerosis and preventing the thickening of the walls of arteries, all of which can lead to cardiovascular disease. A high-potassium diet was shown to exert a protective effect against the development of vascular damage induced by excess salt intake, thus counteracting, to some extent, the dangerous effects of eating too much salt. This large body of evidence from experimental studies provides biological plausibility to the protective effect of dietary potassium against cardiovascular events.

A higher potassium intake is safe for most people, but that there might be some concern about elevated potassium for patients with kidney failure or those taking medicines that lower potassium. In those cases, patients should speak with their doctors.

Well, from above we can see potassium-rich foods mostly are vegetables and fruits. Thus maybe the effects of protection from cardiovascular diseases isn't only come from the potassium but also from the contents of the vegetables and fruits such several vitamins, anti-oxidants, and fibers.

Vitamins and anti-oxidants may help our body maintain our metabolism, and protecting our vessels from oxidative stress that leads to atherosclerosis formation. Fibers in diet also important in preventing cardiovascular diseases because its role in limiting absorption of fats and cholesterol by increasing the food transit in gut, also helping in excretion of cholesterol.

I my opinion, potassium-rich foods gives protection directly because its potassium content but also by others contents inside the foods, but it can be debatable.

After all, the potassium-rich foods is good for your health, since our body need the potassium, and our body have own regulations to keep potassium at normal level.

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Sodium Restriction and Cardiovascular Disease

Introduction
Blood pressure (BP)-related diseases, specifically, stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and kidney disease, are leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States and throughout the world. In the United States, coronary heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of mortality,
whereas heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalizations.

The relation between BP and adverse health outcomes is direct and progressive with no evidence of a threshold, that is the risk of CVD, stroke, and end-stage kidney disease increases progressively throughout the range of usual BP starting at a level of 115/75 mm Hg.

Overall, elevated BP is the second leading modifiable cause of death, accounting for an estimated 395 000 preventable deaths in the United States in 2005.
Worldwide, elevated BP accounts for 54% of stroke and 47% of coronary heart disease events; importantly, about half of these events occur in persons without hypertension.
dietary Sodium

The Facts
Excess intake of salt (sodium chloride) has a major role in the pathogenesis of elevated BP. Excess sodium intake also has BP-independent effects, promoting left ventricular hypertrophy as well as fibrosis in the heart, kidneys, and arteries.

Evidence has documented that a median reduction in urinary sodium of
1800 mg/d lowered systolic/diastolic BP by 2.0/1.0 mmHg in nonhypertensive individuals and by 5.0/2.7 mmHg in hypertensive individuals. The benefits of sodium reduction in persons with poorly controlled BP are striking.

Importantly, the BP response to sodium reduction, while direct and progressive, was nonlinear. Specifically, decreasing sodium intake by 900 mg/d caused a greater reduction in BP when the starting sodium intake was 2300 mg/d than when it was3500 mg/d.

The benefits of sodium reduction in non-hypertensive individuals were recently corroborated in the GenSalt feeding study, which documented that lowering sodium intake to 1500 mg/d reduced BP in 2,000 Asian adults with mean systolic/diastolic BP 120/80 mm Hg.

Sodium reduction also blunts the age-related rise in BP. Because BP rises with age, about 90% of adults eventually become hypertensive.

Consistent with this evidence, a major trial in the United States documented that a reduced sodium intake can prevent hypertension by 20%. Evidence supporting a direct relation of sodium intake and CVD is also accumulating. In a recent meta-analysis of observational studies, a higher sodium intake was associated with an increased risk of stroke and likely CVD.

Independent of its effects on BP, an increased sodium intake has other adverse effects. These include subclinical CVD (ie, left ventricular hypertrophy, ventricular fibrosis, diastolic dysfunction), kidney damage, gastric cancer, and disordered mineral metabolism (ie, increased urinary calcium excretion, potentially leading to osteoporosis).

It is well established that sodium loading suppresses the systemic renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system by inhibiting renin release from the renal juxtaglomerular apparatus. Less well appreciated are findings that sodium loading increases oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction and promotes mitogenic responses (fibrosis in heart, kidneys, and arteries)
resulting in cardiac and vascular remodeling.
Protect our Heart

With regard to arterial dysfunction, higher sodium intake is associated with greater increases in large elastic artery stiffness with aging, and reducing sodium intake from moderate levels by 50% to less than 1500 mg/d reduces large elastic artery stiffness in otherwise healthy middle-aged and older
adults with elevated systolic BP.

Sodium-induced increases in BP may directly induce renal injury or accelerate kidney disease caused by other conditions such as diabetes mellitus or glomerulonephritis. However, excess sodium intake also has deleterious effects on the kidneys independent of increased BP. Studies in experimental animals and in human beings have shown, for example, that high sodium intake can cause glomerular hyperfiltration and increased albumin excretion, renal oxidative stress, and renal fibrosis independent of BP.

The Recommendation
Some sodium intake is required. An Institute of Medicine Committee set 1500 mg of sodium per day as an adequate intake level, primarily to assure nutrient adequacy. Based on the DASH-Sodium trial, it is apparent that Western type
diets can provide this level of sodium intake and that such a diet also can provide adequate levels of other nutrients.

Because 90% of US adults will develop hypertension over their lifetime, the goal should be 1500 mg/d, as recommended by the scientific advisory of
the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Committee.

The health benefits apply to Americans in all groups, and there is no compelling evidence to exempt special populations from this public
health recommendation.

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