Statins Work Better With the Med Diet

If you take Statin drugs to help prevent a heart attack (or another one, after an initial attack), you can probably optimize your meds’ effectiveness by following the Med Diet. Sounds simple, I know. But barriers remain to the adoption of the Med Diet for many…

A tableau of the key ingredients in the much-lauded Med Diet:
It is also, by coincidence, a tableau of some of the
most expensive foods available today…

Do you take one of these medicines for your heart health?

Then you may be able to amplify their beneficial effect by adopting the Mediterranean Diet in tandem with it.

What they did…

Researchers at the Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo (INM) in Pozzilli, Italy studied more than 1,000  adults recruited in the Moli-sani Study, published in the International Journal of Cardiology. For their purposes, the researchers examined the link between Statins and the already lauded Mediterranean Diet, and the potential underlying mechanisms of this positive interaction, so far poorly explored, between drugs and eating habits.

What they found…

“We found that statins and Mediterranean Diet together were more effective, as compared to one or the other considered separately, in reducing the risk of cardiovascular mortality. Likely, a Mediterranean diet facilitated the beneficial effect of statins, that in our real-life study were generally used at low doses,” says Dr. Marialaura Bonaccio, an Epidemiologist at the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at the INM and Lead Author of the study says.

“The favorable combination of statins and Mediterranean Diet appeared to act, [not by reducing] cholesterol levels, by reducing subclinical inflammation, a condition that predisposes to a higher risk of illness and mortality,”explains Dr.  Licia Iacoviello, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular and Nutritional Epidemiology and Professor of Hygiene at the University of Insubria. This finding is of particular interest to researchers in the light of their observation that a high level of subclinical inflammation doubled the risk of mortality in patients who had already had a heart attack or stroke .

The takeaway…

“Our data,” says Giovanni de Gaetano, Director of the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, “suggest that we should focus more on the possible interactions between food and drugs, an aspect largely neglected in epidemiological research. Of course, controlled clinical trials will be needed to clarify these findings. If our data will be confirmed, new therapeutic possibilities could be designed for those who have already had a cardiovascular event, allowing a better modulation of the pharmacological intervention in relation to life habits. This is a new aspect of personalized medicine.”

My take…

Here, here! Let’s get on with it. But let’s also work on how to make the main components of the Med Diet more accessible to the masses. When you look at the Med Diet, it instantly becomes clear that the regime relies on Fish and Poultry in combination with lots of fresh Fruits and Veggies to achieve its beneficial effects. Poultry aside (and it’s not exactly cheap, anymore, either), that’s about the most expensive diet a person could follow. And those who could benefit most from it are the masses at the bottom of the economic ladder.

~ Maggie J.