Eating fewer saturated fats and opting for more polyunsaturated fats lowers the risk of heart attacks and other conditions related to heart disease, according to a new review of study reports.
This is the first review to affirm that an alteration in your diet in this way can reduce your risk of heart attacks, even though experts have for a long while considered that reducing intake of saturated fats improves heart health .
Coronary heart disease is the biggest known killer of UK adults. You develop this disease when your arteries, carrying blood to your heart, become narrowed due to fatty deposits. Should an artery become blocked, you can have a heart attack.
There is no certitude as to why fatty deposits build up in the arteries of certain individuals. However, it is known that these factors, smoking and little or no exercise can add risk.
A further key risk factor is the consumption of a lot of saturated fats, found in abundance in all dairy products and meat.
These fats increase the level of ‘bad’ cholesterol in your blood; this is the cholesterol which creates the fatty deposits in your arteries.
To lower your risk of heart ailments, the medical profession recommends changing saturated fats for a healthier type known as polyunsaturated fats, found in fatty fish, like salmon, and vegetable oil.
These polyunsaturated fats actually help to lower levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol.
This review highlights that those individuals who replaced saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats were 19 percent less likely to have a heart attack or other serious heart conditions during the period of time the studies were conducted than those individuals who did not make and changes in their diet.
The review included eight studies of 13,000 people. The duration of the studies ranged from one year to eight years. It was found that the longer people were on their modified diet, the lower the risk of serious heart problems.