Whole Grains May Cut Heart Failure Risk

(WebMD)  Starting the day with whole-grain cereal may lower the risk of heart failure in the long run.

A new study shows men who eat whole-grain breakfast cereal regularly are less likely to develop heart failure than those who eat it rarely or never.

Heart failure is a condition in which the heart is unable to pump blood as effectively as it should. The risk of developing heart failure is about one in five for the average 40-year-old man or woman, the study's researchers say.

Other studies have suggested that a diet rich in whole grains, such as nonrefined breakfast cereals, can provide a variety of health benefits. But researchers say it's the first study to look at the relationship between breakfast cereal and the risk of heart failure in a large group.

If further studies confirm these results, adding whole-grain cereal may be a relatively risk-free way to reduce the risk of heart failure.

Cereal Fights Heart Failure
The study compared cereal intake and the risk of heart failure among more than 21,000 doctors who took part in the Physicians Health Study I. The results appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Information on the participants' diets was gathered throughout the study and their health was monitored with annual surveys. During more than 19 years of follow-up, there were 1,018 cases of heart failure.

The results showed that the risk of heart failure decreased as cereal consumption increased. For example, the risk of heart failure among those who ate breakfast cereal at least seven times a week was 29 percent lower than that the risk among those who never ate cereal, after adjusting for other heart disease risk factors.

When researchers further analyzed the results they found this healthy effect was associated with whole-grain cereals only, not with refined breakfast cereals.

Researcher Luc Djoussé, MD, of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues say the protective effect of whole-grain cereal against heart failure may be due to the beneficial effects of whole grains on heart disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure, heart attack risk, diabetes, and obesity.

By Jennifer Warner
Reviewed by Louise Chang
©2007 WebMD, Inc. All rights reserved

[gaye5]

Well tikka12, from what I have read, when the Chinese took the outsides off their rice and fed it to the pigs, they had very healthy pigs and the people became sick..
I think this article is the beginnings of greater things, we have known for many years that since refined foods came in that it was ONE of the things helping to cause heart failure..and of course the other one is old age heheh.

I don''t think that Big Phama would really like this one Baileycc as it helps people to not be sick. From what I see of all the people who were hardly sick before they started taking pills, they are now rarely sick so it seems that it is the business of pharmaceutical companies to make people sick to give them more money isn''t it???
Organic whole grains could help all sorts of things like Crohns, Asthma, heart disease, and as strange as it may seem even some irritable bowels problems, wind in the bowels, constipation from which many diseases come from etc etc... Ok I was only a nurse but I still feel that this is the beginnings of a study which can lead to something better..

[tikka12]

This is the kind of junk health story I hate. It does not differentiate among grains or indicate what type of cereal might actually be beneficial. Instead it suggests that if one went to a supermarket and merely snatched any bright colorful package saying "whole grain" (a term not defined or regulated by any government body which is why it is all over the place over the last two years), that would be just fine. What about Celiac disease and wheat allergies that affect millions? Perhaps oat cereal is better? Would it be whole oats or crushed, adulterated, sweetened, mangled oats? What about rice grain, a poor cousin, low in protein and high in starch? And I agree with a previous post against hydrogenated vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup, six different kinds of sugar, sugar substitutes, colors and the totally undefined natural flavors that infuse packaged cold cereals. It may be that cooked whole oatmeal is the only decent cereal. That brings one to the time factor (no one has time to cook) and the other earlier post warning against fungus (too true). Personally, I don%u2019t know what to eat anymore.

[samoncada]

Agree with the ''highly fungal'' comment. Additionally, about 95% of the cereals on the market are highly processed, contain a lot of sugar and in some cases contain hydrogenized oils -- all very bad for the heart.

[asor1-2009]

"..those who ate breakfast cereal at least seven times a week.."
What I am wondering is; How many mornings could one eat breakfast cereal. Don''t we all have just seven mornings? :)

[baileyccc]

Anyone who knows anything in the nutrition world knows that grains are highly fungal. More disinformation from Big Pharma puppet Web MD.