What Vegetarians Taught Us About Heart Health
A new study finds that giving up meat could lower your risk of early death by 7 percent. (Photo: WestEnd61/Getty)
Eat more vegetables and your heart will thank you, according to the results of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. These heart-healthy diets will lower your blood pressure so much that you could cut your stroke risk by almost 15 percent, the authors found.
The authors reviewed 39 studies that looked at the relationship between vegetarianism and blood pressure. They used all definitions of vegetarianism: those who ate only vegetables (technically, vegans) and those who ate dairy, those who ate eggs and dairy, and those who ate fish.
On the whole, people who had switched to primarily vegetarian diets of any type saw improvements in their health equivalent to losing 11 pounds (even if they didn’t, in fact, lose 11 pounds by giving up meat). Their systolic blood pressures were lower by 4.8 millimeters of mercury, a difference that would be expected to lower heart disease rates by 9 percent and stroke rates by 14 percent, and one that cuts the risk of early death from any cause by 7 percent. The relationships held true even after the authors accounted for differences in body weight between vegetarians and omnivores.
Related: 9 Super-Healthy Vegetarian Protein Sources
Diets rich in red meat have been linked to the risk of early death and even to blindness and type 2 diabetes, so it’s little surprise that vegetarians seem to be doing better than the average American. And although the authors of the new review didn’t have enough information about the specific diets these vegetarians were eating, they have a few theories as to why vegetarian diets are better for blood pressure.
Fiber: Vegetarian diets are high in fiber, since vegetables themselves contain lots of this blood-pressure-lowering nutrient and because beans, which provide a lot of vegetarians with their protein, do as well.
Potassium: This is another blood-pressure-lowering nutrient that’s high in vegetarian diets and not so much in omnivorous ones. Deficiencies in potassium are one reason that the Food and Drug Administration is proposing including potassium levels of packaged foods in the new nutrition facts labels.
Blood Viscosity: Interestingly, the authors note, vegetarians also seem to have lower blood viscosity (a measure of blood’s ability to move through blood vessels), which has been linked to lower blood pressure.
Related: The World’s Most Nutritious Green (Hint: It Ain’t Kale!)
“I think the big reasons for lower blood pressure are, over the short-term, the increased potassium intake and reduced blood viscosity,” says study co-author Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and adjunct associate professor of medicine at George Washington School of Medicine. “Over the long-term, weight loss leads to continuing reduction of blood pressure,” he adds. In the review, vegetarians were generally thinner than omnivores.
To be fair, the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine is a pro-vegan medical organization that promotes meat-free diets. But they aren’t the only ones lauding vegetarian (or almost-vegetarian) diets as the best way to lower blood pressure. U.S. News and World Reports recently named the DASH Diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) the best overall diet due to its nutritional completeness and effectiveness at preventing cardiovascular disease. The crux of the diet? Eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; ease up on the sugar, saturated fat and salt; and eat poultry, low-fat dairy and other animal products in moderation.
By Emily Main for Rodale’s Organic Life
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