The Mediterranean diet is considered one of the healthiest because numerous scientific evidences have shown that it helps prevent or delay the onset of diseases, and now a new study in which data from 722,495 women residing in the United States have been analyzed has verified that those who faithfully followed this type of diet had almost a 25% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease or dying from it.
The Mediterranean diet is a lifestyle that includes foods such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes and nuts, quality fats such as extra virgin olive oil, fish and shellfish, and a moderate amount of wine, along with the practice of physical exercise and a good rest, while the intake of dairy products, red and processed meats and animal fats is limited.
To carry out the research, 16 studies published between 2003 and 2021 have been analyzed. The results of the analysis have been published in Heart and reveal that the Mediterranean diet was beneficial for 18-year-old women who were followed for an average of 12.5 years. Specifically, the researchers have found that the risk of coronary disease was 25% lower in those with good adherence to the Mediterranean diet. These women also had a lower risk of stroke, although the difference was not statistically significant.
Differentiate the effects of the Mediterranean diet by gender
“Women-specific cardiovascular risk factors, such as premature menopause, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes, or predominant female risk factors, such as systemic lupus, may independently increase the risk [de enfermedad cardiovascular]”, the researchers have written.
“More original, well-designed studies are needed to verify that the effect of the Mediterranean diet is greater in women”
“It is possible that preventive measures, such as a Mediterranean diet, which focuses on inflammation and risk factors [de enfermedades cardiovasculares]impose different effects on women compared to men,” said cardiologist Sarah Zaman, associate professor at the Westmead Center for Applied Research and the University of Sydney School of Medicine and Health in Australia and lead author.
The investigators have stated that the results did not change when excluding each of the studies from the analysis one by one, which “further supports a strong inverse relationship for the [enfermedad cardiovascular] Incident and total mortality with greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet in women.
Although they have acknowledged certain limitations, such as the fact that the studies analyzed were observational and “based on self-reported food frequency questionnaires,” they consider the findings robust enough to encourage further gender-specific research to help guide the clinical practice in heart health.
Dolores Corella, professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Valencia and researcher at CIBER Obesity and Nutrition (CIBEROBN) explained in statements to SMC Spain that “the interest of the study is that it affects the need for conduct better studies stratified by sex”. She and she added: “The global study seems interesting to me to highlight the need to carry out more studies separately in men and women. More original, well-designed studies are needed to verify that the effect of the Mediterranean diet is greater in women. Although some results are meta-analyzed by sex, in general the gender perspective has not yet been well incorporated into nutritional epidemiology research and it is necessary to have better questionnaires to measure diet in men and women and to include other confounding variables such as pregnancies, menopause, etc., in women.
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