Sarah Gregory, Georgios Ntailianis, Oliver Shannon, Emma Stevenson, Craig Ritchie, Katie Wells, Graciela Muniz-Terrera
Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular diseases (2023)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.numecd.2023.07.020
Summary
A Mediterranean diet is rich in fruit, vegetables, pulses, olive oil and oily fish. People who eat this diet have been shown to have better cardiovascular health such as lower blood pressure and lower body mass index (BMI). The aim of this study was to (1) understand if the Mediterranean diet was associated with better cardiovascular health in the PREVENT dementia cohort and (2) to see if this differed between men and women. Three different scores were created which represent how close an individual’s diet represented a Mediterranean diet. Associations between these diet scores and measures of cardiovascular health, which included: blood pressure, BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, cholesterol, triglycerides and fasting glucose were then tested. The study found that higher Mediterranean diet scores were associated with lower blood pressure, lower BMI and lower cardiovascular risk scores and found these results were particularly consistent for women. This suggests the importance of considering sex and gender in the development of nutritional recommendations to improve cardiovascular health.