According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 800,000 Americans have a stroke each year–most of which are preventable.
And now Chinese scientists say preventing it could be as simple as adding more meat to your diet.
Led by Dr. Xinfeng Liu from the Nanjing University School of Medicine, researchers say that people who ate a diet rich in protein faced a 20 percent reduced risk of stroke.
The research was published in the June issue of Neurology, a health journal.
“Dietary protein intake tends to be associated with other nutrients that may prevent stroke, such as potassium, magnesium and dietary fiber,” says Liu. “Among different protein sources, fish consumption has been associated with decreased risk of stroke, whereas red meat consumption has been associated with increased stroke risk.”
In the analysis, researchers reviewed several studies which examined the dietary habits of nearly 255,000 people living in Japan, Sweden, and the United States. Nearly 10 years of health data were collected, and researchers recorded information about what they ate through diet questionnaires. Incidences of stroke were also recorded, which Liu used to determine how certain dietary habits increased or decreased their risk.
In six of the studies, researchers found that a person’s stroke risk decreased as protein intake increased, regardless of what was consumed. In three of the studies, however, the link between protein intake and stroke risk was too weak to be considered nothing more than coincidence.
However, Liu says that most of the studies found that those who ate the most protein faced a significantly reduced risk of stroke. In fact, those who ate 20 extra grams of protein per day were 26 percent less likely to experience a stroke in their lifetime.
“The results of this study show us a ‘trend’ of a positive factor in diet that can contribute to decrease the risk of stroke,” says Dr. Arturo Tamayo, a stroke prevention researcher from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. “The results of this meta analysis should be interpreted carefully.”
While those in the study were the least likely to have a stroke if they consumed protein from animal sources, Liu still warns that certain meats, such as red meat, should be avoided due to its high cholesterol and saturated fat content. Other meat sources, such as fish, are a better choice because they contain other nutrients that further decrease a person’s stroke risk.
“Thus, stroke risk may be reduced by replacing red meat with other protein sources such as fish,” says Liu. “Fish contains omega-3 fatty acids and some other nutritional elements including protein that may protect against stroke.”
What You Should Do
Want to reduce your risk of stroke? By adding just 20 additional grams of protein to your diet each day, you could decrease your stroke risk by up to 26 percent. Be careful about what you eat though–protein sources such as red meat could actually increase your stroke risk due to an increase in saturated fat and cholesterol.
Readers: What do you think of high protein diets?
Source:
Study Links Eating More Protein to Lowered Stroke Risk – Reuters.com
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