Low-Fat Dairy Linked to Lower Stroke Risk

April 20th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

THURSDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) — In what the researchers
say is the largest study on the issue to date, adults who consumed higher
amounts of low-fat dairy products also had a somewhat lower long-term risk
of stroke.

The study involved nearly 75,000 Swedish adults who were tracked for an
average of 10 years after completing a dietary questionnaire.

Those who consumed low-fat versions of products such as milk, yogurt or
cheese had a 12 percent lower risk for stroke than those whose diet
typically included high/full-fat versions of these dairy staples.

“I think this finding certainly makes sense,” said Lona Sandon, a
dietician and assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “When you have more
high-fat dairy you have more saturated fat, which we know is one of the
types of fats that can affect LDL, or ‘bad,’ cholesterol levels. And
eating saturated fat leads to clogging up arteries in the heart and the
brain. So then you’re more likely to have the clots breaking off and
causing something like an ischemic stroke.”

However, “when you’re looking at stroke risk you’d really want to look
at an individual’s whole dietary pattern,” said Sandon, who was not
involved in the new research. “But it is certainly plausible that
whole-fat dairy bumps up the risk that is out there.”

A research team led by Susanna Larsson, from the division of
nutritional epidemiology at the National Institute of Environmental
Medicine at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, reported the findings April
19 in the journal Stroke.

The study authors noted that in the United States, about one-third of
all adult men and women over the age of 18 have high blood pressure, which
they describe as a “major controllable risk factor” for stroke. Still,
they added, only about half of affected Americans have their blood
pressure under control.

With that in mind, experts have long touted the benefits of the Dietary
Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH diet), with its emphasis on low-fat
dairy consumption.

In 1997, the Swedish team administered food surveys to almost 75,000
men and women between the ages of 45 and 83, none of whom had a prior
history of either heart disease or cancer.

From that point forward, the incidence of stroke among study
participants was monitored via data collected by the Swedish Hospital
Discharge Registry.

Over the course of about a decade, nearly 4,100 strokes occurred, the
authors noted. People who stuck to low-fat dairy products appeared to have
a somewhat lower risk for stroke. The study was only able to find an
association between eating low-fat dairy products and lowered odds for
stroke; it could not prove cause-and-effect.

The Swedish researchers called for further large studies to examine the
apparent association, while at the same time suggesting that, if it holds
up upon further scrutiny, the finding could have broad public health
implications.

Larsson’s team pointed out that when it comes to dairy consumption, the
typical North American diet closely mirrors that of northern Europeans, so
a snapshot of Swedish diets and stroke risk might be relevant to a U.S.
population.

“The bottom line is that if you’re consuming more fat in your day — no
matter where it’s coming from — it is going to increase your risk for
atherosclerosis [hardening of the arteries], and thereby your risk for
stroke,” said Sandon. “And that’s what’s behind the USDA’s Dietary
Guidelines for Americans, which recommends that you get three dairy
servings per day, in order to get enough calcium and potassium, but at the
same time making sure that those servings are low-fat.”

Larsson’s study was funded by the Swedish Council for Working Life and
Social Research and the Swedish Research Council.

More information

For more on how diet impacts stroke risk, head to the National Stroke Association.