Benefits Of Fruits And Vegetables.
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Benefits Of Fruits And Vegetables.
The article below is from the July 3 issue of The New York Times.
July 3, 2001
VITAL SIGNS / PREVENTION
Clues to Benefits of Fruit and Vegetables
By JOHN O'NEIL
A new study has found that vegetarians have high blood levels of salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. Given that aspirin
can prevent heart attacks, the new findings may help explain other studies that have found lower levels of heart disease among
people who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables.
The study, published last week in The Journal of Clinical Pathology, compared the salicylic acid levels of a group of Buddhist monks
(who are vegetarians), non- vegetarian residents of the same region and a group of diabetic patients taking 75 milligrams of aspirin
daily.
One of the researchers, Dr. John Paterson of the Royal Infirmary in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, said that he was not
surprised to find higher levels of the acid in the blood of the monks than in their neighbors'. He recounted an old joke: What's a
Scotsman's favorite vegetable? A sausage. But Dr. Paterson said he was surprised that some of the monks had as much salicylic
acid in their blood as some of the diabetics taking aspirin.
Eating foods rich in salicylic acid does not provide all the cardiac benefits of taking aspirin, Dr. Paterson said: aspirin helps block the
formation of blood clots, while fruit and vegetables do not. But salicylic acid from either source reduces the kind of inflammation
that can contribute over years to the hardening and narrowing of the arteries and to certain kinds of cancer, he said.
Before aspirin was synthesized in the late 19th century, Dr. Paterson said, doctors gave patients extracts of willow bark and other
plants high in salicylic acid. The new study shows that significant levels of the chemical can come in a more palatable form.
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