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I really love my job. It’s rewarding to help individuals deal with their cardiac health, sometimes with operations, always with advice and lifestyle adjustments to focus on wellness. Given my responsibilities for overseeing cardiac care for the entire Geisinger system, I’m so proud to help hundreds of remarkably skilled and committed professionals apply their talents for so many of our neighbors’ benefit.
Among the tools we have to help with cardiovascular wellness are things you’ve read about here over the years including exercise, not smoking, awareness of and management of blood pressure, regular checkups and reliably taking carefully chosen medicines under a professional’s watchful eye. One of the most common recommendations we make though, concerns diet.
But a new study shows not all effects of recently trendy diets are beneficial, and one metabolic result might actually be linked to heart complications.
The Paleolithic diet —commonly referred to as the Paleo diet, which is also known as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet — is based on the theory that obesity and related diseases have proliferated at alarming rates because of humanity’s reliance on foods that are rooted in the farming age that began roughly 10,000 years ago.
Therefore, the theory goes, consuming foods that were only available in the Paleolithic era, which spanned approximately 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago, should be more naturally suitable to the human physiology and metabolism. The diet is comprised of lean meats, fish, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables and avoids dairy products, grains and legumes.
Basically, if you would hunt for or gather it, you can eat it, but nothing that emerged from agriculture or domesticating animals is fair game.
But now this widely adopted diet, lauded for its improvement of gut health, is coming under the clinical microscope.
Research, published in July in the European Journal of Nutrition, suggests Paleo eaters, in comparison to folks who ate according to the typical dietary recommendations of their country, showed a lower intake of “resistant starch” (which functions like soluble fiber, feeding good gut bacteria), showed different microorganisms in their gut, and had a higher blood levels of trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO).
TMAO is of concern because of its association with cardiovascular disease. High TMAO levels contribute to elevated risk of clot-induced heart attack and stroke and have also been linked to higher risk of dying among patients with stable coronary artery disease.
A 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association showed people with high TMAO levels had a 62 percent higher risk of developing major adverse cardiovascular disease events than participants with low TMAO levels, and a 63 percent higher risk of dying from all causes in the same period of time.
The “a-ha” moment in the Paleo study came when researches realized that the association with negative health outcomes couldn’t be completely blamed on the abundance of meat consumed in the Paleo diet. The lack of whole grains, it turns out, is just as worrisome.
Now, let’s not just worry about the Paleo diet, other popular diets that emphasize low carbohydrate intake, like the ketogenic, or “keto,” diet are likely to lead to similar risks.
In providing resistant starch and similar fermentable fibers, whole grains are a key ingredient in good gastrointestinal health. In turn, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart attack and stroke risk can be reduced by keeping these fibrous good-bacteria feeders in your diet.
Fiber deficiency in the United States is not an issue specific to people following low-carb diets; it’s a problem that touches 95 percent of Americans who fail to meet the recommended daily minimum of 25 grams a day for women and 38 grams a day for men.
The easiest way to combat fiber deficiency, high TMAO levels, poor gut health and the potential for heart attack, stroke and premature death, be sure to eat your suggested daily doses of whole grains, fruits and vegetables … it’s also delicious when so many great summer fruits and vegetables are fresh and available.
