A Thought About Diet and Heart Disease

by Jill Richardson · 2009-05-09 03:40:00 UTC
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pillsRecently I posted about an amazing book I read, The Queen of Fats by Susan Allport. She wrote about scientific findings that the rise in heart disease over the last century is linked to an increase in omega-6 fatty acids and a decrease in omega-3 fatty acids. (And yes, unfortunately, saturated fats are still bad for you... I got kinda hopeful while I read the book that maybe the new information meant that I get to eat a lot of butter, but it isn't so.) Omega-3s are often highest in leafy greens and animals that ate leafy greens or grazed on pasture. Omega-6s are often highest in seeds and animals that ate a lot of seeds. And omega-6s are higher in hydrogenated oils (trans fats) than non-hydrogenated oils.

So what does that mean to us? It means that eating lots of green veggies is really good for us, as we already knew. And we already knew that factory farming was bad, but now we know WHY it's so bad. In addition to the MANY environmental reasons why it's bad, it's bad because it decreases omega-3s in meat, dairy, and eggs, and increases omega-6s. And often it also means that we humans eat more oils from seeds too (in the case of soy, nearly all soy grown in this country is crushed for oil for human consumption, and factory farmed animals eat the resulting meal).

But here's another thought. Everyone in my extended family above a certain age has a heart condition. They are ALL on blood thinners to reduce the risk of their blood clotting. My grandmother nearly died this past year as a result of her blood thinners, and when they took her off of them, she nearly died AGAIN because of blood clots. So she's back on the blood thinners. And a part of taking blood thinners is limiting the amount of leafy greens you eat because the vitamin K in them that help your blood coagulate (clot). But consider that populations with high omega-3 diets (compared to the omega-6 in their diets) have blood that takes longer to clot than those of us on the standard western (high omega-6, low omega-3) diet. And omega-3s, found in leafy greens, are negatively linked to heart disease (i.e. more omega-3s relative to omega-6s = less heart disease). I wonder what will happen when medicine as practiced here catches up to the science, and how that will change the care for patients currently on blood thinners?

(Photo credit: rodrigo senna on Flickr.com)

Jill Richardson
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