Risk Of Chronic Lung Disease Increased By Having A Poor Diet

♦ If you can manage a diet with polyunsaturated fats, plenty of green vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and reduce the level of red and processed meats, reduce processed meals, lower the intake of sugary drinks and refined grains, then the chance of developing chronic lung disease is significantly reduced according to scientists. 

Classic Hamburger & Fries. Photo by KEKO64. Courtesy FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Classic Hamburger & Fries. Photo by KEKO64. Courtesy FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We all know that a healthy diet helps us to maintain weight and reduce the chances of developing cancer and heart diseases. What wasn’t so well known until now, was that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or chronic lung disease and indeed respiratory diseases generally could be added to the list of complaints that were reduced by eating well. It is reckoned that COPD is the third leading cause of death.

The significant feature of the research described in the BMJ was that a balanced diet, eating three regular portions of food and not snacking, ingesting  whole grains, oats, wheat, (bulgar for example), whole meal breads, pasta and fibre would extend to this arena of health. All the ‘poor’ foodstuffs such as meats, refined foods and drinks were again not helpful in staving off these respiratory disease conditions.

The type of diseases being assessed were the obstructive pulmonary types – emphysema and bronchitis being two where the bronchioles are constricted which reduces air flow to the lungs. Imagine wheezing after a long run and that is the condition for some-one with the disease just walking up a few flights of stairs. Mind you, smoking is also cited as an issue not surprisingly, but at least one third of the subjects in the study weren’t smokers. That aspect highlighted other risk factors were at play.

The study itself looked directly at the impact of diet on COPD risk. The diets of 47 thousand men  enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study between 1986 and 1998, and about 73 thousand women who took part in the US Nurses’ Health Study between 1984 and 2000 were assessed on their general health and eating habits. These subjects  took part in a biennial health survey with the information collected in questionnaires. The researchers at Harvard University and in France calculated the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI-2010) scores which serves as a measure of diet quality. Factors such as gender did not have a part to play and results were independent of whether they smoked or not.

Whole Grain Bread. Photo by sakhorn48. Courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Whole Grain Bread. Photo by sakhorn48. Courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 Most of the subjects (participants) were white and health professionals. At the end of the study, about 167 men and 723 women had developed COPD. What the research showed was that COPD risk was much lower in those on diets with low levels of red or processed meat etc. with more ‘healthy’ foodstuffs as already described.

Incidentally, there was no association to be made between the onset of asthma in adults and the data from the  AHEI-2010 diet scores. The message that such a study delivers is that as well as smoking, quality of diet has a critical role to play in the pathogenesis of lung diseases.

Varraso, R., Chiuve, S.E., Fung, T.T., Barr, R.G., Hu, F.B., Willett, W.C. Camargo, C.A. (2015)  Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 and risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among US women and men: prospective study. Brit. Med. J.  350 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h286 (Published 03 February 2015)

 

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