Go vegan to prevent a heart attack

Opinion: February 19, 2013 at 12:00a.m.

By Heather Moore

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

If you’re suffering from the winter blues — whether you’re dealing with a bout of the flu or digging yourself out from several feet of snow — you might want to make yourself a soothing cup of soy cocoa before reading about the latest health news. Cardiologists with the University of New Mexico and the Heart Institute at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles believe that people are up to 36 percent more likely to have fatal heart attacks and strokes in winter than summer — even if they reside in warmer regions, such as Southern California or Florida.

The cardiologists — who analyzed around 1.7 million death certificates filed between 2005 and 2008 for people in Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Los Angeles — aren’t entirely sure why health risks go up during the winter, but they note that environmental factors, emotional stress and poor lifestyle choices can trigger heart attacks and strokes. People tend to exercise less and eat heavier, cholesterol-laden meals in winter months.

Winter or not, I’m not too worried: I’m vegan.

‘Heart-attack-proof

Vegans are virtually “heart-attack-proof,” according to Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, star of the acclaimed documentary “Forks Over Knives.” Esselstyn has cured patients with clogged arteries just by putting them on healthy vegan diets.

If you, too, want to reduce your risk of a heart attack — and give yourself a bit more peace of mind this winter — try eating tasty vegan foods, such as black bean and corn chili, lentil and spinach soup, pasta primavera and faux-chicken pot pie.

Vegan foods taste great, and they’re cholesterol-free and generally low in saturated fat. According to Dr. David Jenkins, a nutrition scientist at the University of Toronto, “the evidence is very strong that vegans, who eat no animal products, have the best cardiovascular health profile and the lowest cholesterol levels.”

The human body manufactures all the cholesterol it needs, so each additional 100 milligrams of cholesterol that you consume by eating meat, eggs or dairy products — the only dietary sources of cholesterol — adds roughly five points to your cholesterol level. When enough cholesterol and fat clog your coronary arteries — the ones leading to your heart — your heart will lose some of its blood supply, and you’ll have a heart attack.

But every time you reduce your cholesterol level by 1 percent, you reduce your risk of a heart attack by 2 percent. Researchers from Oxford University recently found that vegetarians have a 32 percent lower risk of falling ill or dying from heart disease than do people who eat meat and fish.

William Castelli, the director of the Framingham Heart Study, the longest-running clinical study in medical history, believes that the heart-disease epidemic would disappear if people simply ate a vegan diet. The statistics back up his theory, too. The average vegan has a cholesterol level of 133 — 77 points lower than the average meat-eating American’s and 28 points lower than the average vegetarian’s. There haven’t been any reported heart attacks in people with cholesterol levels below 150.

Plant-based diet

In fact, research shows that people who follow a plant-based diet have 2.5 times fewer cardiac events, including heart attacks, strokes, bypass surgery and angioplasty, than do people who eat animal-based foods.

If you want to save lives — animals’ and your own — take this information to heart and eat vegan foods this winter and all year round.

Heather Moore is a staff writer for the PETA Foundation. Distributed by MCT Information Services.