US: Study finds link between vegetables and decrease in strokes in women

Eating your veggies and snacking on fruit isn’t kids’ stuff any more. The low-calorie, high-antioxidant foods, plus some grains, could be the key for women keeping a stroke at bay, according to reports by the American Heart Association. Researchers in Sweden found that antioxidant-rich foods inhibit oxidative stress and inflammation in the body.

A study of more than 35,000 women in Sweden — more than 31,000 cardiovascular disease-free women and 5,600 with a history of heart disease — found those who ate an antioxidant-rich diet had fewer strokes especially if they had no history of cardiovascular disease.

From 1997 to 2009, the researchers tracked the woman who were between the ages of 49 and 83 years old. The women, and the make-up of their diets, were tracked through the date of their first stroke, their death, or Dec. 31, 2009 — whichever came first.

Food and information was collected through food-frequency questionnaires. At the end of the study period, researchers identified 1,300 strokes among women who were cardiovascular disease-free, and 1,000 strokes among women with a history of the disease.

Antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, carotenoids and flavonoids can inhibit oxidative stress, an imbalance between the production of cell-damaging free radicals and the body’s ability to neutralize them, according to Susanne Rautiainen, the study’s first author and a Ph.D. student at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. Antioxidants reduce blood clotting, blood pressure and inflammation.

Source: nj.com