The relationship between cardiovascular disease and diet

Diet and cardiovascular disease have a very close relationship. In 1913, the Russians used large amounts of cholesterol to raise rabbits to make atherosclerotic changes in their arterial tubes, but they failed to attract attention. During the Second World War, Norway and the Netherlands were occupied by the Germans. The residents’ diet was inadequate and the coronary heart disease was significantly reduced. Study their diet and found that they eat less lipids, especially less saturated fatty acids. Later, it was discovered that people in less economically developed regions have less fat in their diets and use vegetable oils, which contain more unsaturated fatty acids. They suffer less from coronary heart disease than Europe and the United States. This shows that eating less animal fat uses more vegetable oil and increases the ratio of unsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids, which is of great benefit to human health. Patients with coronary heart disease have higher blood cholesterol than normal people. Saturated fatty acids in foods also increase blood cholesterol. It was concluded that elevated blood cholesterol can damage the arteries and therefore has a direct relationship with coronary heart disease. However, the mechanism of this role of cholesterol is still unclear.

Recent studies have shown that linoleic acid in vegetable oil can reduce blood cholesterol levels, but it has little effect on triglycerides; while linolenic acid in fish fats has an effect on lowering blood cholesterol and triglycerides. Oleic acid is 2-5 times higher. In addition, linolenic acid and other omega-3 polyenoic acids have the effect of reducing another risk factor for coronary heart disease, namely, it can reduce platelet aggregation and blood coagulation, and has the effect of preventing thrombosis.

Of course, there are other factors that affect the blood cholesterol level; 1 high levels of cholesterol in food can increase blood cholesterol, but its role is not too great. Because cholesterol absorption is not necessarily high, and cholesterol from food can inhibit cholesterol synthesis in the body. However, it is advisable to eat high cholesterol foods at ordinary times. 2 Sucrose eats more to increase triglyceride and cholesterol in the blood, which is far more than glucose or starch. Because fructose quickly turns into pyruvate in the liver, it is converted into triglyceride or cholesterol, which is carried by low-density lipoprotein into the blood circulation. 3 In the digestive tract, crude fiber can bind with bile acid salt, so that more cholesterol is converted into bile acid salt and excreted from the body, causing blood cholesterol to drop. 4 yogurt factor or milk factor can reduce blood cholesterol. 5 Vitamin C is involved in the conversion of cholesterol to bile acid. Vitamin C has the effect of lowering blood cholesterol. 6 When there are many unsaturated fatty acids in the food, there are also more bile salts and cholesterol in the stool.

The occurrence and development of heart and cerebrovascular diseases that endanger people's health are related to eating habits. According to a large-scale population survey, unreasonable dietary allocation and secondary apolipoprotein abnormalities are important factors causing atherosclerotic lesions. Some scholars fed cholesterol to rabbits to establish experimental animal models of atherosclerosis. Experimental observations found that during the establishment of the model, abnormal increase of blood lipids followed by atherosclerotic lesions. This shows that eating habits and atherosclerosis are related by abnormal lipid metabolism.

Over the past decades, a large number of epidemiological data worldwide have shown that dietary habits are closely related to the occurrence and development of heart and cerebrovascular diseases. People who normally eat high-fat, high-cholesterol foods have a higher incidence of heart and cerebrovascular diseases. high. High cholesterol is an important factor in causing atherosclerotic lesions. Therefore, reducing cholesterol intake can reduce the incidence of atherosclerosis. In addition, saturated fatty acids can increase platelet activity and thrombophilia, thereby accelerating the progression of atherosclerosis, eventually leading to heart and cerebrovascular disease.

Another example is that some people are accustomed to high-salt diets, and the high-salt diet is one of the dietary factors that cause hypertension. Metabolic studies have shown that the daily requirement for healthy growth of sodium is only 200 milligrams (equivalent to 0.5 grams of salt), whereas the average daily intake of Westerners is 5-20 times the physiological requirement (equivalent to 2.5-10 Kg salt, Chinese people's salt intake is quite high, about 15 grams. Therefore, from the perspective of early prevention of heart and cerebrovascular diseases, we should start from children and even infants, and develop salt-free and light eating habits.