14 DAY TRIAL // Medical experts have been trash-talking high-fat diets for what seems like an eternity. As it turns, they might now be left with no choice but to, well, eat their words. Together with a cheeseburger and some pizza, that is.
Not to beat about the bush, a new paper in the American Journal of Physiology - Heart and Circulatory Physiology argues that, contrary to what many assume, high-fat diets are not all that bad. On the contrary, they can prove beneficial.
Thus, evidence at hand indicates that, in some cases, foods that contain a tad too much fat than what the doctor recommends can protect people against the damaging effects a heart attack is bound to have on their circulatory system and, in doing so, help them recover faster from such an event.
Every high-fat diet has a silver lining
In the report detailing their work, the scientists behind this research project detail that, as part of this investigation, they first fed several laboratory mice a high-fat diet and then caused the rodents to suffer a heart attack. They then checked how their bodies responded to it.
Much to their surprise, they found that, when compared to a control group, these mice that got to eat fatty snacks and treats before experiencing an attack suffered about 50% less damage to their heart. The scientists believe that it was the high-fat diet that protected the animals.
Writing in the American Journal of Physiology - Heart and Circulatory Physiology, the researchers further detail that the mice that got the best protection were the ones that were kept on a high-fat diet for about a week prior to having an attacked induced.
This is yet to be confirmed, but the specialists who carried out these experiments have reasons to believe that, in the short run, high-fat diets benefit the heart and make it more resistant to attacks by boosting the activity of pathways that serve to protect this organ.
The importance of this study
It is believed that, just like in the case of mice, high-fat diets can also protect human hearts against attack damage if eaten one day to two weeks before such an event. Any longer than this and they will instead increase the risk of heart attack.
Specialist W. Keith Jones and fellow researchers wish to further investigate how and why high-fat diets sometimes prove a worthy ally, and hope that their work will pave the way for the development of better treatment options for people diagnosed with one heart condition or another.
“The study improves our understanding of the relationship between diet and health,” Dr. W. Keith Jones says, as cited by Science Daily. Furthermore, “Learning about how fat, in the short run, protects against heart attacks could help in the development of better therapies.”