Vegan Diet and Heart Disease
Posted by peaceable_palate on Feb 18, 2011 · Member since Feb 2011 · 63 posts
Has anybody read anything about the recent study linking vegan diets and heart disease? Just curious to get some feedback from other vegans and vegetarians.
Ridiculous study! It's in the journal of agriculture, so no surprise, but...it's mainly pointing out that vegans COULD be low on B12 and Omega 3's, and this COULD lead to a lower HDL, which COULD lead to atherosclerotic risk. Bah. I think the abstract is funny...
"This review summarizes the effect of a habitual vegetarian diet on clinical complications in relation to chemistry and biochemistry. Omnivores have a significantly higher cluster of cardiovascular risk factors compared with vegetarians, including increased body mass index, waist to hip ratio, blood pressure, plasma total cholesterol (TC)..... Compared with omnivores, vegetarians, especially vegans, have lower serum vitamin B12 concentration and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) levels in the tissue membrane phospholipids, which are associated with increased collagen and ADP stimulated ex vivo whole blood platelet aggregation.........."
Silliness.
It is worth emphasizing to vegans that they need to make sure that they're getting enough B12 and omega-3s for their cardiovascular health. But yeah, "increased" compared to whom?
Check out this response from Virginia Messina: A healthy vegan diet reduces heart disease risk
AC - Good point about the article appearing in the Journal of Agriculture. This might be a bit of a stretch, but I can't help but wonder if media coverage of this study coinciding with Oprah's Vegan Challenge was by design. Oprah has a lot of reach in the U.S., and she is bound to have an influence on her millions of viewers. Just a thought.
V-Dog - I decided to put my husband and myself back on a vegan DHA supplement after reading this study. Some time ago, another study came out saying that DHA supplementation wasn't needed because the body could transform omega-3 fatty acids into DHA as needed. However, some research shows that this ability is weak in certain individuals. I figure better to be safe than sorry.