By: Thomas Pickering, MD, DPhil, FRCP, Director of Integrative and Behavioral Cardiology Program
of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.

Current dietary guidelines recommend eating more grain products to prevent heart disease, but do not say whether they should be whole grain or refined grain. The main content of grain is carbohydrate, but whole grain foods contain many other ingredients which may also be beneficial, such as anti-oxidants, fiber, and phytoestrogens.

In the Nurses’ Health Study, which has provided much unique information about diet and heart disease, 75,000 US nurses filled out detailed dietary records and were then followed for 10 years to see who gets heart disease. The analysis showed that there was a strong relation between how much whole grain foods the women ate and how likely they were to get heart disease. When compared with women who ate virtually no whole grain, those who ate the most (up to three servings a day) had 25% less heart disease. This was independent of other lifestyle habits such as vitamin intake and the intake of refined grain.

Doctor’s comments

This study provides the most conclusive evidence to date that eating whole grain rather than refined grain protects women (and presumably also men) from getting heart disease. Exactly what the ingredients are that provide this benefit and which are removed in the refining process, remains unknown. Phytoestrogens are a possible candidate; these are “natural” estrogens which lower blood triglycerides and may have other beneficial effects.

Where it was published