Studies have found that the DASH diet can lower blood pressure, and dietitians say it's one of the healthiest ways to eat, Food & Health : Today Indya

Studies have found that the DASH diet can lower blood pressure, and dietitians say it's one of the healthiest ways to eat

Food & Health

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• The DASH diet has been found to help lower blood pressure and prevent heart disease.

• It emphasizes foods that are low in sodium and high in potassium, calcium, magnesium, protein, and fiber — such as leafy greens, fruits, whole grains, nuts, fat-free or low-fat dairy, and lean meats.

• The eating plan recommends limiting foods high in saturated fat, such as red meat and whole-milk dairy, as well as sugary foods and sweetened beverages.

• The DASH diet can help with weight loss, and dietitians say it is one of the healthiest ways to eat.

• This article was reviewed by Samantha Cassetty, MS, RD, a nutrition and wellness expert with a private practice based in New York City.

Studies have found that the DASH diet can lower blood pressure, and dietitians say it

DASH stands for dietary approaches to stop hypertension and was developed in the early 1990s when the National Institutes of Health was researching ways to lower blood pressure.

Since then, studies have found that the DASH diet can help lower blood pressure and prevent heart disease in people over time.

Here's what you need to know about the DASH diet.

How to follow the DASH diet

The DASH diet focuses on nutrient-rich foods that are low in sodium, like many fruits and vegetables.

"For too long we focused just on cutting down on sodium," said Lisa Sasson, a registered dietitian and clinical professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University. "We now know that including more of the other minerals that are in plant-based foods is very helpful and beneficial."

The NIH offers a helpful guide for following the DASH eating plan, with recommended serving sizes based on your daily calories and examples of the best foods to eat. It mainly recommends:

• Fruits

• Vegetables

• Whole grains

• Fat-free or low-fat dairy

• Lean meats

• Nuts, seeds, and legumes

• Limited sweets, fats, and oils

So if you're following a diet of 2,000 daily calories, a day on DASH might look like this:

• Breakfast: Three-quarters of a cup of bran-flakes cereal, with one medium banana and one cup of low-fat milk, paired with a slice of whole-wheat bread and, if you like, one teaspoon of margarine. Wash it all down with a cup of orange juice.

• Snack: One-third of a cup of unsalted almonds.

• Lunch: Three-quarters of a cup of chicken salad, with two slices of whole-wheat bread and a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

• Snack: A quarter cup of raisins.

• Dinner: Three ounces of roast beef topped with two tablespoons of fat-free gravy with a side of one cup of sauteed green beans and a small baked potato topped with a teaspoon of margarine. If you're not satisfied, add a small apple and one cup of low-fat milk.

• Snack: Half a cup of fat-free fruit yogurt.

Specifically, you'll want to eat foods that are high in potassium, magnesium, calcium, and fiber. Some examples of DASH-approved foods are oatmeal, leafy greens, potatoes, apples, bananas, oranges, fish, and mixed nuts.

Research on the DASH diet's effect on blood pressure

A 2017 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology examined 412 participants with pre-hypertension or stage-one hypertension. The study found that the participants who followed the DASH diet and reduced their sodium intake to 1,150 milligrams per day for 30 days straight saw a greater reduction in their systolic blood pressure than participants who ate a standard American diet.

Moreover, the higher a person's systolic blood pressure was at the start of the study, the greater the improvement they saw from following a low-sodium DASH diet. For example, people whose original systolic blood pressure was greater than 150 mm Hg saw a decrease of as much as 15.54 mm Hg, whereas people whose original systolic blood pressure was less than 130 mm Hg saw a drop of as much as 2.07 mm Hg.

A 2014 review in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Disease found that the DASH diet was also associated with lower diastolic blood pressure as well as systolic blood pressure.

And while these two studies didn't examine the diet's effect on blood pressure in the long term, a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Hypertension found that a 16-week structured DASH diet was associated with lower systolic blood pressure for the next eight months.

Moreover, a 2018 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition of 1,409 participants over 24 to 28 years found that living by a DASH diet might also improve a person's cardiovascular health, as it was associated with higher levels of HDL cholesterol and lower pulse wave velocity, a measure of a person's arterial health. Cardiovascular health was even better for people who paired the DASH diet with regular exercise, the study found.

However, the benefits of this diet may extend beyond hypertension and heart health.

"Although the original research was about the benefits of the DASH diet on hypertension, it would be a diet I recommend for everyone," Sasson said.

She said it's a diet that's easy to follow, since it isn't very specific and there aren't many restrictions, aside from cutting out excessive sweets — the NIH recommends five servings of sweets a week at most.

"The diet is very safe and sustainable for anybody who's looking to eat healthier," Sasson said. "It's exactly how we would advise all people to eat."

While the main focus of this diet is not weight loss, Sasson said many people do end up losing some weight on the diet, since many of them are eating healthier, less processed foods, and cutting back on snacking. A 2016 study found that the DASH diet was more effective for weight loss than other low-energy diets, especially for participants who were overweight or obese.

According to Sasson, the DASH diet is also a good way to educate people on what healthy meals look like, especially when so many of us eat on the go and opt for processed foods.

"We should look at it as one of the healthiest ways to eat," she said.

Article Original Source : https://www.insider.com/what-is-dash-diet

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Does talc powder cause ovarian cancer?

Food & Health

medicalnewstoday

Does using powder in the genital area increase the risk of ovarian cancer? A new data analysis of over 250,000 women found no link, but the authors urge caution as the study may not be large enough.

Some people use powder on their genitals to reduce moisture, friction, or odor.

Most powder products, which some people call talcum powder or baby powder, contain talc.

Whether there is a link between the use of powder and ovarian cancer is a controversial topic.

Several thousand women have filed lawsuits against a baby powder manufacturer after concerns that they developed ovarian cancer in response to using the product.

In the most extensive study to date, Katie O'Brien from the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the United States National Institute of Health, and her co-authors try to address this issue.

"Ovarian cancer is a rare but deadly disease, and it is important to study possible risk factors for the disease if we want to learn how to prevent it," O'Brien told Medical News Today.

"Previous studies had reported a possible positive association between genital powder use and ovarian cancer, but my co-authors and I saw an opportunity to do a very large study that also addressed some of the potential limitations of the previous ones," she continued.

The study features in the journal JAMA.

Largest data set to date

For their study, O'Brien and her colleagues made use of four prospective cohort studies: the Nurses' Health Study, Nurses' Health Study II, Sister Study, and the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study.

"To our knowledge, these are the only cohorts that collected data on genital powder use," O'Brien explained to MNT on the choice of study population.

The team combined the data from all four cohorts to look for associations between powder use and an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer. The total number of women included in the study was 257,044.

Across this data set, 39% of women reported having used powder in their genital area, of which 10% said they use such products long-term.

After excluding women who had missing data, there were 250,577 women in the study without ovarian cancer and 2,168 women who developed ovarian cancer during the follow-up period.

O'Brien calculated the estimated risk of developing ovarian cancer by the age of 70 and compared the group who used power to the group who didn't use powder.

"In this pooled analysis of four large U.S. cohorts, there was no statistically significant association between self-reported use of powder in the genital area and risk of ovarian cancer," the authors write in the paper.

The team did find a small effect when they analyzed a subgroup of women with intact reproductive tracts, but this did not reach statistical significance. In the paper, the authors write that "this finding should be considered only exploratory and hypothesis generating."

They explain that in women with intact reproductive tracts, powder can directly travel to the affected areas and cause irritation or inflammation. In women who have had their womb removed or their fallopian tubes blocked, powder doesn't have physical access to the ovaries.

Limitations and caution

O'Brien and her colleagues point to several limitations in their study.

Each cohort study measured powder use differently. It was particularly difficult to interpret the results the team obtained from analyzing frequency and duration of powder use.

All four studies only asked about powder use at the start of the study, and none had information about the type of powder. The data included predominantly white, educated women. Around half had a BMI of less than 25, which doctors class as a moderate weight.

The authors urge caution: "the study may have been underpowered to identify a small increase in risk."

"Despite being the largest study to date, it was not big enough to detect a small change in risk of ovarian cancer, which is a fairly rare cancer."

Katie O'Brien

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Dana R. Gossett from the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California in San Francisco and Dr. Marcela G. del Carmen from the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard University Medical School in Boston, MA, highlight the difficulties of collecting enough data to analyze.

"Future analyses would be strengthened by focusing on women with intact reproductive tracts, with particular attention to timing and duration of exposure to powder in the genital area," they write. "Accumulation of such data will take many years, and given the low rates of current powder use among US women, may not be feasible."

"These are the only four large cohorts (to our knowledge) that have collected data on this topic. Therefore, it is unlikely that there will be another study capable of reaching or exceeding this sample size for a long time," O'Brien explained to MNT.

Article Original Source : https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327434.php#1