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Study Highlights:
-- Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables as a child is
associated with healthier arteries as an adult.
-- The amount of vegetables consumed in childhood
correlated to the amount of arterial stiffness in
adulthood.
DALLAS, Nov. 30, 2010 /PRNewswire-
USNewswire/ -- Children who consistently eat lots of
fruits and vegetables lower their risk of having stiff
arteries in young adulthood, according to research
reported in Circulation: Journal of the American
Heart Association.
Arterial stiffness is associated with atherosclerosis,
which underlies heart disease. When arteries are stiff,
the heart works harder to pump blood.
Researchers compared childhood and adulthood
lifestyle factors -- including consumption levels of
vegetables, fruit, butter and alcohol, as well as
smoking and physical activity status -- with pulse
wave velocity in young adulthood. Pulse wave
velocity assesses arterial stiffness.
"When the heart beats, the blood's ejection causes a
pulse wave, which travels along the wall of the
arterial tree," said Mika Kahonen, M.D., Ph.D.,
senior study author and professor and chief physician
for the Department of Clinical Physiology at
Tampere University Hospital in Tampere, Finland.
"The velocity of this pulse wave is dependent on the
stiffness of the arterial wall; the stiffer the wall, the
higher velocity. It is well known that the arterial
stiffening process has a major role in the
development of cardiovascular diseases.
"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study
looking at the associations between childhood
lifestyle risk factors and pulse wave velocity in
young adulthood."
The researchers examined lifestyle factors and
measured arterial pulse wave velocity of 1,622
participants in the Cardiovascular Risk in Young
Finns Study, which followed children ages 3 to 18 for
27 years. They found:
A pattern of eating fewer vegetables in childhood
was associated with higher pulse wave velocity as an
adult. The association remained significant when
adjusted for traditional cardiovascular risk factors
such as high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, (good
cholesterol) and low-density lipoproteins (bad
cholesterol).
The group with the persistent pattern of eating more
vegetables and fruit from childhood to adulthood, had
an average 6 percent lower pulse wave velocity
compared to those who ate the least vegetables and
fruits.
The number of lifestyle risk factors (low vegetable
consumption, low fruit consumption, low physical
activity and smoking) in childhood was directly
associated with pulse wave velocity as an adult. This
association remained significant when adjusted for
the number of lifestyle risk factors in adulthood.
"These findings suggest that a lifetime pattern of low
consumption of fruits and vegetables is related to
arterial stiffness in young adulthood," Kahonen said.
"Parents and pediatricians have yet another reason to
encourage children to consume high amounts of fruits
and vegetables."
Among limitations of the study, researchers derived
the data from a self-reported food frequency
questionnaire of monthly consumption instead of
daily, which could underestimate associations. The
study also was limited to white European
participants.
SOURCE American Heart Association
Copyright 2010
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning
Company. All rights Reserved.