Alternative Therapies

A DASH (Dietary Approaches to stop Hypertension) diet, which is rich in vegetable and fruit intake as against a lower intake of proteins, was primarily seen to reduce blood pressure among a selected group of women, but Boston researchers claim that the diet helped in lowering the risks of heart strokes and other coronary heart diseases too.

What is the DASH diet?
Dash diet was established by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Though initially it was used to treat people with high blood pressure, the dash diet is now useful for treating other ailments as well.

The dash diet includes the following:

• Low cholesterol
• Low levels of sodium
• 30% calories from various fats
• Rich in vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fruits, nuts
• Fat-free dairy products
• Low red meat
• Less processed foods
• Low sweet beverages

Teresa Fung, who led the team of researchers in Boston, formulated scores to measure women’s diets that matched the dash diet. Women with a higher score were reported with reduced risks of coronary heart diseases and heart strokes as against those who scored low because they did not stick to the dash diets so religiously.

After 24 long years, results from the study showed that women ranking in the top 20% of the dash score were 24% less prone to heart diseases, and about 18% of them also showed reduced stroke risks as compared to women in the bottom 20% of the dash score.

The study also revealed there was a dramatic reduction in the stroke risks for women who witnessed a long history of hypertension at baseline as compared to women who didn’t.