Eating fruit every day can slash risk of heart disease
Baku, September 4 (AZERTAC). Scientists have found that consuming a portion and a half can lower the chances of suffering the deadly condition by up to 40 per cent.And the more fruit you eat the better - with the benefits increasing as servings grow.
Experts say that improving the diet is "critical" to lowering the deadly heart disease epidemic which is the UK's single biggest killer.
Heart disease is responsible for at least 73,000 deaths each year in Britain, an average of 200 people every day.
And there are 2.3 million people living with the devastating effects of heart disease which can make everyday tasks almost impossible.
Now, new research presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Barcelona has shown that daily fruit consumption cuts the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by up to 40 per cent.
Led by Dr Huaidong Du from the University of Oxford, the findings from the seven year follow-up study of nearly 0.5 million people in China found that the more fruit people ate, the more their risk of heart disease declined.
Dr Du said: "CVD, including ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke, is the leading cause of death worldwide. Improving diet and lifestyle is critical for CVD risk reduction in the general population."
The study included 451,681 people with no history of heart disease who were not taking high blood pressure-lowering drugs at the start of the study from five urban and five rural areas of China.
The daily amount of fruit eaten by the participants was recorded into five categories - never, monthly, one to three days a week, four to six days a week or daily.
Over the seven-year follow up period there were 19,300 cases of heart disease and 19,689 strokes - 14,688 of these were ischaemic and 3,562 haemorrhagic.
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