Could going veg lower your risk of heart disease?

by Genevra Pittman Reuters 2 February 2013 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Vegetarians are one-third less likely to be hospitalized or die from heart disease than meat and fish eaters, according to a new UK study.
 Earlier research has also suggested that non-meat eaters have fewer heart problems, researchers said, but it wasn't clear if other lifestyle differences, including exercise and smoking habits, might also play into that. Now, 'we're able to be slightly more certain that it is something that's in the vegetarian diet that's causing vegetarians to have a lower risk of heart disease,' said Francesca Crowe, who led the new study at the University of Oxford. Still, she noted, the researchers couldn't prove there were no unmeasured lifestyle differences between vegetarians and meat eaters that could help explain the disparity in heart risks.

 Crowe and her colleagues tracked almost 45,000 people living in England and Scotland who initially reported on their diet, lifestyle and general health in the 1990s. At the start of the study, about one-third of the participants said they ate a vegetarian diet, without meat or fish. Over the next 11 to 12 years, 1,066 of all study subjects were hospitalized for heart disease, including heart attacks, and 169 died of those causes.

 After taking into account participants' ages, exercise habits and other health measures, the research team found vegetarians were 32 percent less likely to develop heart disease than carnivores. When weight was factored into the equation, the effect dropped slightly to 28 percent. The lower heart risk was likely due to lower cholesterol and blood pressure among vegetarians in the study, the researchers reported this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

 Meat eaters had an average total cholesterol of 222 mg/dL and a systolic blood pressure—the top number in a blood pressure reading—of 134 mm Hg, compared to 203 mg/dL total cholesterol and 131 mm Hg systolic blood pressure among vegetarians. Diastolic blood pressure—the bottom number—was similar between the two groups.

 Crowe said the difference in cholesterol levels between meat eaters and vegetarians was equivalent to about half the benefit someone would see by taking a statin. The effect is probably at least partly due to the lack of red meat—especially meat high in saturated fat - in vegetarians' diets, she added. The extra fruits and vegetables and higher fiber in a non-meat diet could also play a role.

 'If people want to reduce their risk of heart disease by changing their diet, one way of doing that is to follow a vegetarian diet,' Crowe told Reuters Health.

 However, she added, you also don't have to cut out meat altogether—just scaling back on saturated fat can make a difference, for example. Butter, ice cream, cheeses and meats all typically contain saturated fat. 
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/YGvv40 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online January 30, 2013.

Green Tea Improves Your Health

About 20 years ago when I was living in Kingston , Jamaica ,my landlady An Yueng told me one day that that the secret to her good health was Tai Chi and drinking green tea.
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She did her Tai Chi every morning. I would watch her go through the graceful routine and she would say," Good for you. Make you peaceful and you make more children." Whenever I visited her she would offer me a cup of green tea. She must have noticed my wrinkled smile at the pale green tasteless (to me) brew. "It makes you live longer, Chinee people not like Westerners. We respect elders. They say green tea good for you."

With the advent of the internet I began to read up about green tea in 1994 after I noticed a small news item on the news. It said that drinking green tea daily is one of the best health habits you can have.
Later I found out that several studies have shown that regular use of green tea can improve the ratio between “good” and “bad” cholesterol, ease mild depression, help prevent diabetes and more.

A recent study, published in the September 13, 2006 Journal of the American Medical Association, found that among 40,530 Japanese adults followed for 11 years, there was a 16 percent lower risk of death from all causes among those who drank more than 5 cups of green tea a day compared to those who drank less than one cup daily.

Even though the health food stores are full of Green-tea extracts I prefer drinking the tea. That's right, I've finally learned to love the pale green brew. Sometimes I add it to regular black tea.
I think An Yeung was right and now the scientific studies seem to back her view that the greater benefit comes from simply drinking green tea.
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High IQ link to being vegetarian-

Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says.
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A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.

Researchers said it could explain why people with higher IQ were healthier as a vegetarian diet was linked to lower heart disease and obesity rates.

The study of 8,179 was reported in the British Medical Journal.

Twenty years after the IQ tests were carried out in 1970, 366 of the participants said they were vegetarian - although more than 100 reported eating either fish or chicken.

Men who were vegetarian had an IQ score of 106, compared with 101 for non-vegetarians; while female vegetarians averaged 104, compared with 99 for non-vegetarians.

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