Vegetarians and Heart Conditions

 

No matter what your reasons for consuming a more vegetarian diet, there’s no refusing the obvious health benefits that are gained from the elimination of red meat from your diet. On the average, vegetarians have lower levels of the blood fats, cholesterol and triglycerides than meat eaters of like age and social status have. Elevated levels of blood fats are affiliated with an increased risk of heart conditions.

 

Lacto-ovo vegetarians, those who consume eggs and dairy products, which contain cholesterol-raising saturated fats and cholesterol, have greater cholesterol levels than do vegans, as those who refrain from all animal foods are called. But even amid lacto-ovo vegetarians, cholesterol levels are typically lower than they are amid meat eaters.

 

Investigators have discovered that older men who eat meat 6 or more times a week are twice as likely to die of cardiopathy as those who abstain from meat. Among middle-aged men, meat eaters were 4 times more likely to suffer a disastrous heart attack, according to the study.

 

As for women, who are partly saved by their hormones and generally develop heart disease later in life than men do, the risk of fatal cardiopathy has been discovered to be lower only among the older vegetarians.  In a 1982 study of more than ten thousand vegetarians and meat eaters, British investigators found that the more meat consumed, the better the risk of suffering a heart attack.

 

Though doing away with meat from the diet is likely to reduce your consumption of heart-damaging fats and cholesterol, replacing large amounts of high-fat dairy products and cholesterol-rich eggs may nullify the advantage. To glean the heart-saving Advantages of vegetarianism, consumption of such foods as hard cheese, cream cheese, ice cream and eggs ought to be moderate. And the introduction of more veggies, fruits and raw foods will decidedly enhance the Advantages of refraining from eating meat.