Study: High-fat diets raise stroke risk in women

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A moment on the lips, forever on the hips?

A bad figure is hardly the worst of it. Eating a lot of fat, especially the kind that's in cookies and pastries, can significantly raise the risk of stroke for women older than 50, a large new study finds.

We already know that diets rich in fat, particularly artery-clogging trans fat, are bad for the heart and the waistline.

The new study is the largest to look at stroke risk in women and across all types of fat. It showed a clear trend: Those who ate the most fat had a 44 percent higher risk of the most common type of stroke compared to those who ate the least.

"It's a tremendous increase that is potentially avoidable," said Dr. Emil Matarese, stroke chief at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Penn. "What's bad for the heart is bad for the brain."

He reviewed but did not help conduct the research, which was presented Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference. It involved 87,230 participants in the Women's Health Initiative, a federally funded study best known for revealing health risks from taking hormone pills for menopause symptoms.