Mediterranean diet can help reduce heart attack risk according to study

The Mediterranean diet has been hailed many times before as the key to staving off all sorts of medical conditions and extending life. Now, new evidence from a study supports the fact that this is the case, as olive oil is found to help reverse some heart attack risk factors slightly.
The study in Spain has said that eating more olive oil and more nuts won’t prevent people from developing heart attack risk factors, but can help to reverse them in those already at great risk.
The trial lasted five years and found that those who had ‘metabolic syndrome’ – a collection of traits that can lead to heart attacks – had a greater chance of getting rid of it if they were on a Mediterranean diet.
“A healthy diet, like the Mediterranean diet, with a moderate-high intake of vegetable fat (in the form of virgin olive oil or nuts) is a good healthy option for the prevention of several cardiovascular risk factors and chronic disease,” the senior author of the study, Dr. Jordi Salas-Salvado, said to Reuters.
‘Metabolic syndrome’ includes factors like a large waistline, high blood pressure and blood sugar, too many triglycerides, and too little of the ‘good’ cholesterol HDL.
The combination of foods that make up a Mediterranean diet helps to alleviate the traits of metabolic syndrome, and so reduce the risks of a heart attack.
For example, consuming more olive oil was linked to a loss of abdominal fat in the participants of the study, despite the fact no one was dieting to lose weight.
Dieting and exercising have been shown in the past to reduce metabolic syndrome, but this study was looking purely at the effects the Mediterranean diet had.
The Mediterranean diet consists of bread, pasta, fruit and vegetables, and a focus on fish rather than meat. It has a lot of beans and nuts in it too.
This evidence once again supports the fact that the Mediterranean diet is heralded as one of the healthiest.