Study: Healthy diet helps more than blood pressure

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A diet rich in fruit and vegetables and low in meat and sugar can not only help lower blood pressure but can reduce levels of homocysteine, a compound linked with heart disease, researchers said on Monday.

They said a new study showed that a healthy diet can affect the heart and circulatory system in more than one way.

The diet, known as Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), includes plenty of fruits and vegetables. Only low-fat dairy foods are allowed and meat and sugar are cut back.

The diet was shown a few years ago to significantly lower blood pressure. Some of the same researchers checked to see what its effects were on homocysteine, an amino acid linked with heart disease that is produced by metabolizing protein.

"Our work shows that modifying the diet can have multiple benefits, beyond changes in traditional risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol," Dr. Lawrence Appel, who led the study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a statement.

"To get these benefits, people should eat a well-balanced diet. It's not enough to eat just an occasional fruit or vegetable while consuming a high-fat diet," added Appel, whose studies are published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

The researchers, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), came up with the DASH diet after learning that vegetarians had a lower risk of heart disease. They believed that most Americans would not stick to a strict vegetarian diet, so they allowed a little meat, poultry and fish.

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