Study Sheds Light on Smoking Cessation, Weight Gain, and Subsequent Heart Disease Risk

"Cigarette smoking is an important cause of cardiovascular disease, and smoking cessation reduces the risk. However, weight gain after smoking cessation may increase the risk of diabetes and weaken the benefit of quitting," write Juhua Luo, Ph.D., of the Indiana University School of Public Health, Bloomington, Ind., and colleagues.

As reported in a Research Letter, the authors used data from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) to assess the association between smoking cessation, weight gain, and subsequent coronary heart disease (CHD) risk among postmenopausal women with and without diabetes. In the WHI, 161,808 postmenopausal women 50 through 79 years of age were recruited from 40 sites between 1993 and 1998 and followed up every 6 to 12 months. Women without known cancer or cardiovascular disease at baseline or CHD at year 3 were followed up until CHD diagnosis, date of death, loss to follow-up, or September 30, 2010, whichever occurred first.

Of 104,391 women followed up, 3,381 developed CHD, during an average of 8.8 years. The researchers found that smoking cessation was associated with a lower risk of CHD among postmenopausal women with and without diabetes. Weight gain following smoking cessation weakened this association, especially for women with diabetes who gained 11 lbs. or more, although power was limited in this subgroup due to the small number of cases.

Source-Eurekalert

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High Protein Diet May Not be Very Effective in Reducing Body Weight and Risk of Heart Disease

The recent study published in the BioMed Central Nutrition Journal, aimed at identifying the long-term benefits of low protein diet and high protein diet in reducing body weight and risk of heart disease.

Researchers systematically reviewed 15 long term randomized control studies that compared low and high protein diets, low in fat, and estimated the dietary effects on weight, waist circumference, fat mass, total body cholesterol, LDL and HDL cholesterol, triacylglycerols, blood pressure, C-reactive protein (CRP), fasting glucose, fasting insulin and glycosylated hemoglobin.

Primary analysis of the findings revealed that a decrease in fasting insulin and an increase in good cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) were significant with high protein diets. However, with further analysis, the increase in HDL levels was attributed to the high fat content in the diet rather than the protein content.

The analysts note that the findings of the studies do not reveal any significant benefits of high protein diet on the biomarkers for obesity, heart disease and blood sugar level.

Hence, the authors opine that further research is required before high protein diets are recommended as a control measure for obesity and heart disease.

Reference:

Long-term effects of low-fat diets either low or high in protein on cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis; Lukas et al; BMC Nutrition Journal 2013.

Source-Medindia

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