PCOS/Insulin Resistance SupportSupport for us with any of the following: Insulin Resistance, Syndrome X, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, or other endocrine disorders.
Most of us with PCOS also have Insulin Resistance, which puts us at a higher risk for heart disease. Now there is a new study linking high glycemic foods with heart disease in women. This was a good reminder to myself that I need to watch the good carbs, for more reasons that weight.
White bread, rice, and other carbs boost heart disease risk in women
By Denise Mann, Health.com
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Women who eat lots of carbs, (high glycemic index) are more likely to develop heart disease
* Scientists speculate whether men's bodies process carbs differently
* Cut out processed carbs and choose whole grains veggies, fruits, legumes
(Health.com) -- Women who eat more white bread, white rice, pizza, and other carbohydrate-rich foods that cause blood sugar to spike are more than twice as likely to develop heart disease than women who eat less of those foods, a new study suggests.
Men who eat lots of those carbohydrates -- which have what's known as a high glycemic index -- do not have the same increased risk, however, perhaps because their bodies process the carbs differently, the researchers found.
Only carbohydrates with a high glycemic index appear to hurt the heart. Carbs with a low glycemic index -- such as fruit and pasta -- were not associated with an increased risk of heart disease, which suggests that the increased risk is caused "not by a diet high in carbohydrates, but by a diet rich in rapidly absorbed carbohydrates," says the lead author of the study, Sabina Sieri, of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto ****onale dei Tumori, a national institute for cancer research in Milan, Italy.
The glycemic index ranks on a scale from 1 to 100 how quickly (or slowly) carbohydrates affect your blood-sugar levels. (White bread scores 100.) Foods that rank below 55 are considered to have a low glycemic index and produce only small fluctuations in blood glucose and insulin levels; foods that rank above 70 are said to have a high glycemic index and tend to cause unhealthy spikes in blood sugar.
In the study, published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Sieri and her colleagues analyzed data from a large, ongoing study of nutrition and cancer risk. The researchers surveyed roughly 48,000 Italian adults about their diets in detail, noting the amount and types of carbohydrates they consumed on a regular basis. (People with diabetes, who have abnormal levels of blood sugar and insulin, were excluded.) Not surprisingly -- the study was conducted in Italy, after all -- bread, pasta, and pizza were common sources of carbs.
During the eight-year follow-up period, 463 people in the study -- 65 percent of them men -- experienced heart problems (including heart attacks), had angioplasty or bypass surgery, or died of heart-disease-related causes.
The women who reported eating the most carbohydrates had twice the risk of developing heart disease as their counterparts who consumed the fewest carbs.
When the researchers broke the carbs into high and low glycemic index categories, the increased risk was even more apparent: Women who ate the most high glycemic foods had about 2.25 times the risk of developing heart disease than women who consumed the fewest. ...
See CNN in the link above the quote for the rest of the story!
Heart Disease and High Glycemic Foods
