heart health Inflammatory facts about

How inflammation affects

ne of the most important recent discoveries in health is that inflammation is a crucial contributor to a surprising number of conditions— arthritis to unexpected ones such as depression, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

How inflammation works

It is now known that inflammation plays an important role in cardiovascular disease. But how could inflammation be a cause of something that seems as uninflammatory as heart disease? We asked Decker Weiss, NMD, FASA, who is both a naturopath and a cardiologist at the Weiss Center for Health and Medicine.

He told us that inflammation plays both a general and a specific role. Generally, inflammation contributes to cardiovascular disease because inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, autoimmune diseases, and diabetes increase the risk of developing heart disease.

Specifically, Weiss says, “… elevated insulin, elevated blood sugar, trans fats, and homocysteine irritate and inflame the endothelium, or the lining of our blood vessels, initiating the process of coronary artery disease,” says Weiss. So, inflammation can both initiate and accelerate heart disease.

Atherosclerosis, or thickening of the arteries caused by plaque buildup, is an important example of how inflammation contributes to heart disease. Recent evidence shows that every step of atherosclerosis, from plaque formation to rupture is driven by inflammatory proteins called cytokines and interleukins.

How nutritional heart helpers work

Think of some of the ways garlic and dark chocolate can help your heart. Inflammation causes endothelial dysfunction, or impaired function (narrowing) of the lining of blood vessels, which leads to diseases of the circulatory system and atherosclerosis.

Garlic

may help tamp down inflammation. So, supplementing with garlic could aid in improving endothelial function and elasticity of blood vessels and, thus, play an important role in preventing cardiovascular disease.

Diet, inflammation, and heart disease

One of the most innovative studies on preventing heart disease started with two things we know—that inflammation causes heart disease and that diet causes inflammation—and asked whether diet could cause heart disease.

The huge study found that diets that were higher in foods that cause inflammation were associated with a significant 38 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease, 46 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease, and 28 percent higher risk of stroke.

Inflammatory foods included red meat, processed meat, organ meat, refined carbohydrates, and sweetened beverages.

Anti-inflammatory foods are heart healthy and include leafy green vegetables, dark yellow vegetables, fruit, whole grains, tea, coffee, and wine.

Dark chocolate

may help reduce inflammation, and it may also improve endothelial function, improving blood vessel function and dilation enough to seriously reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

It follows, of course, that plant-based diets can help reduce your risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease.