diversify A study published in October by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) found that personal wealth helps not only with finances, but also with eating habits. Not many people have heard of a “portfolio diet,” which consists of plant-based foods like nuts, oats, berries, and avocados that have been proven to lower unhealthy cholesterol, but this is a long-term diet. One of the easiest ways to improve your cardiovascular health. . “The idea is that each of these foods will lower cholesterol minimally, but if you base your entire diet on a variety of these foods, you’ll see a significant reduction in cholesterol.” [unhealthy] “Cholesterol,” said Andrea Glenn, a postdoctoral fellow in nutrition at HSPH and lead author of the study. The more of these foods you eat, the more protective they will be, but you don’t need to consume them all to reap the benefits of your diet, she said. She says, “Just like with a business portfolio, you can choose what you want.”

Previous research has shown that the Portfolio Diet lowers levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol that can build up in arteries and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. It showed what could be done. A 2005 study found that the Portfolio Diet lowered LDL cholesterol levels by about 30 percent in four weeks. The same effect was achieved over the same time period with statins, which are cholesterol-lowering drugs. However, all of these previous studies were short-term clinical trials ranging from 4 weeks to 6 months. Last year’s epidemiological study tracked participants’ health over 30 years, making it one of the first studies to examine the long-term effects of diet.

Glenn and colleagues, including epidemiology and nutrition professor Walter Willett, collected information on the diets of more than 200,000 adults enrolled in a long-term health study that began in the mid-1980s to early 1990s and ended in 2016 or 2017. used data. Every four years, the participants, who were free of heart disease to begin with, filled out dietary questionnaires to record their health status. Researchers scored each participant’s dietary patterns based on their dietary adherence to the portfolio. Researchers found that by the end of the 30-year period, those who followed the diet most closely had a 14 percent lower risk of heart disease and stroke compared to participants with lower scores.

“The portfolio diet…was linearly and consistently associated with a 14 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke,” Glenn said. “There was also a linear dose relationship with all three outcomes, meaning the more Portfolio Diet foods you added to your diet, the greater the risk reduction.”

The Portfolio Diet isn’t the only eating pattern talked about for its potential to prevent cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and stroke. The Mediterranean diet has been known for decades to protect heart health. The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet was developed in the early 1990s to lower blood pressure. Portfolio meals are not mutually exclusive with these other eating patterns and, in fact, share similarities with them. All dietary patterns tend to emphasize unprocessed, plant-based foods such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

“It’s good to have multiple options for different eating patterns, because people need to be able to stick to them over a long period of time,” Glenn says. “We also found that there was only partial adoption. [the portfolio diet] Still, it provided cardiovascular benefits. Therefore, it is not necessary to implement all parts of the diet from scratch. You’ll probably get some benefit from doing some parts or all of it. ”

The Portfolio Diet differs from other heart-healthy eating patterns in that it emphasizes multiple plant-based food components. These include proteins such as legumes and soy. A viscous fiber found in oats, barley, berries, okra, eggplant, and apples. Phytosterols from nuts and seeds. Monounsaturated fatty acids, such as those found in avocado and olive oil.

“What is unique about this study is that we focused on plant-based dietary patterns that combine multiple plant-based ingredients,” said co-author Frank Fu, Stair Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and Professor of Medicine. Ta. “The benefits don’t just come from fiber or plant-based fats and proteins,” he continued. Complex ingredients enhance health benefits beyond what each individual ingredient can provide alone. He said a plant-based portfolio diet has the added benefit of being healthy not only for humans but also for the planet. “As we face a climate crisis, I think it’s important to take care of more than just human health.”There are also environmental impacts. (See Healthy Plate, Healthy Planet, March-April 2020, page 34.)

The exact process by which the Portfolio Diet lowers cholesterol varies. Most important of all is the simple act of replacement. “Replacing red meat with tofu reduces the amount of saturated fat in your diet,” says Glenn. Plant-derived ingredients also have cholesterol-lowering effects. Foods containing viscous fibers (which dissolve in water to form a gel-like substance in the gastrointestinal tract) combine with bile acids in the intestines, forming complexes that are eventually excreted. The body then has to produce more bile acids to replace those lost, a process that consumes cholesterol. Phytosterols (compounds structurally similar to cholesterol found in nuts and seeds) compete with and interfere with the absorption of cholesterol in the intestines, causing the excretion of unabsorbed cholesterol. And plants contain proteins that have been shown to inhibit the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). When ATP levels decrease, cholesterol synthesis also decreases.

Scientists plan to conduct further research to understand the biological mechanisms underlying the diet’s benefits, Hu said. They are conducting research to determine the portfolio diet-related metabolites (molecules produced during metabolic processes) that researchers can measure in people’s blood, allowing future studies to assess dietary adherence. will be easier to track. They also want to investigate the potential impact of diet on other chronic diseases and mortality, such as type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

Co-author Joan Manson, Bell Professor of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School, said dietary patterns go beyond their ability to prevent disease and “may result in healthier aging patterns.” . “This is another area of ​​great interest to us: preserving physical function and slowing cognitive decline, memory loss, and cognitive aging.”

On the other hand, it is clear that diet improves cardiovascular health and that it is not an all-or-nothing approach. “Be open to trying new foods and see if you can pick a few items from your portfolio of meals to replace what you’re already eating,” Glenn said. “This is a great way to start adding cholesterol-lowering plant-based foods to your diet.”