The DASH diet was initially developed to help patients lower their blood pressure, but a large study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) demonstrates that women who followed the diet also significantly reduced their risk of developing heart failure.
Published in today’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the findings offer still more evidence that a diet high in plant foods and low in sugar and saturated fats is good for your cardiac health.
“High blood pressure is always of concern because it has the potential to lead to major adverse events, including strokes, heart attacks and heart failure,” explains senior author Emily Levitan, ScD, a research fellow in the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Center at BIDMC.
She and her coauthors, therefore, hypothesized that the DASH diet (short for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) would also reduce a woman’s risk of heart failure through its blood pressure lowering effects as well as its secondary effects on cholesterol and other heart-disease risk factors