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23.08.2021

Daily cup of nitrate-rich leafy vegetables helps prevent cardiovascular disease

If you eat a cup of leafy greens every day, your chance of having a heart attack, stroke, heart failure or other cardiovascular incident decreases by 15 percent. A study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology comes to this conclusion.

Study
Australian epidemiologists at Edith Cowan University analyzed data from 53150 Danes who had participated in the Danish Diet, Cancer, and Health Study. The researchers were able to follow the study participants for an average of 23 years.

When the study began, the participants were free of cardiovascular disease. During the study, however, 14088 (that is 27 percent) had to deal with an infarction, stroke, heart failure or other cardiovascular incident.

The researchers knew the participants' diet and looked at whether they could find nutrional factors that helped determine whether someone developed a cardiovascular disease.

Results
When the researchers divided the study participants into 4 equally sized groups based on their intake of nitrates from vegetables, they found that the group with the lowest intake [an average of 23 milligrams of nitrate per day] had a systole and diastole that were 2.6 and 1.4 points higher, respectively, than in the group with the highest intake of vegetable nitrate [average 141 milligrams of nitrate per day].

Click on the table below for a larger version.

The effect of the intake of nitrate from vegetables on cardiovascular disease was greater. Compared to the study participants with a relatively low intake of nitrate from vegetables [23 milligrams per day], the study participants with an intake of 60 milligrams of vegetable nitrate per day or more had a 15 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

An even higher intake of nitrate did not appear to protect even better.

Amount
It is not difficult to get 60 milligrams of nitrate from vegetables daily. This amount is present in cup or 75 grams of leafy vegetables.

Source:
Eur J Epidemiol. 2021 Apr 21. doi: 10.1007/s10654-021-00747-3. Epub ahead of print.

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Cardiovascular Health
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