Low Fat Diet.. Matters of the heart

The best known benefit of a low-fat diet is its effect on your heart and blood vessels. Heart disease is the leading cause of death among American men and women. How many times have you heard that someone had a “sudden heart attack”?

The irony, of course, is that most heart attacks are the result of gradual changes in the circulatory system that develop over many years. These changes include atherosclerosis, a gradual hardening and thickening of the blood vessels due to an accumulation of plaque, a fatty waxy substance that builds up over the years of sedentary living and poor eating. Plaque restricts the flow of blood through your arteries. At the same time, people with heart disease are more prone to forming blood clots, and in the artery that’s already narrowed by plaque, one of these clots can be enough to stop blood flow entirely. The result is myocardial infarction-what we call a heart attack.

Doctors have long known that a diet high in saturated fat is the primary cause of atherosclerosis and that cutting the fat from your diet can slow the process or even reverse it.