NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jul 22 - High glycemic index diets may be linked with death from inflammatory diseases among postmenopausal women, new research suggests.
Older women who consumed high glycemic index diets were nearly three times more likely to die from inflammatory diseases in the study compared to those on relatively low glycemic index diets, according to a report published online June 23rd in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
"This risk increase is considerably higher than risks seen so far for development of type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease," lead investigator Dr. Anette E. Buyken, of the Research Institute of Child Nutrition, Dortmund, Germany, told Reuters Health by e-mail.
On the other hand, "women may generally alleviate diseases associated with chronic inflammation when consuming a low glycemic diet," she said.
Working with an older Australian cohort, the researchers looked for relationships of glycemic index, dietary fiber, and carbohydrate-containing food groups with mortality from noncardiovascular, non-cancer inflammatory disease. (The women had passed menopause; the men were at least 49 years old at baseline.)
Eighty-four of 1490 women and 86 of 1245 men died of inflammatory diseases over a 13-year period. Based on completed food-frequency questionnaires, women in the highest glycemic index tertile had a nearly 3-fold increased risk of inflammatory death compared to those in the lowest tertile (multivariate hazard ratio adjusted for age, smoking, diabetes, and alcohol and fiber consumption: 2.89; p for trend 0.0006).
Women with increasing intakes of foods high in refined sugars or refined starches (p = 0.04) and decreasing intakes of breads and cereals (p = 0.008) or vegetables other than potatoes (p = 0.007) also had a greater risk of inflammatory disease mortality. Their glycemic indices partly explained these associations.
There was no link between glycemic index and inflammatory mortality in men, however, "perhaps because they are less susceptible to oxidative stress-related diseases than women," Dr. Buyken said.
The only factors that lowered the risk of inflammatory death in men were higher consumption of fruit fiber (p = 0.005) and fruit (p = 0.04).
Dr. Buyken and her colleagues deliberately excluded death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Focusing on causes of death that were dependent on inflammatory or oxidative processes "allows more direct conclusions on the potential link between glycemic index and inflammatory diseases," she said.
"From a clinical perspective, intervention trials into the preventive potential of a low GI diet in chronic inflammation are warranted," she added.
SOURCE: http://link.reuters.com/faj98m
Am J Clin Nutr 2010.
I think this is wonderful advise. Especially for the men. I mean eat more friut thats something for the guys it seems they need help in later years for cardio health.