How avocados may effect your risk of Cardiovascular Disease.
As a cardiologist and internist in Los Angeles, I find my patients here are a
little more health conscious than they might be in Chicago, where I went to
medical school. Try to take away people's Polish sausage and pierogi in the
Windy City and you'll practically have a riot on your hands. At least in Los
Angeles, cardiology patients know when to avoid such saturated fat-fests, and
they have generally accepted doctors' recommendations to eat less red meat and
more vegetables. But the best laid plans – and best-planned diets –often go
astray. Because sometimes you just want a burger. And no matter how you slice
it (grind it?), burgers have earned a bad reputation. Fry them and there's a
gulf of grease; grill them and you'll get a charred carbon coating. If you're a
burger lover, you don't see much in the way of good news these days. But
recently, Dr. David Heber and his colleagues at UCLA published a study that
examined the effect of adding avocado to a burger – and the results are pretty
surprising!
Find the Pub Med abstract here
Background: Burgers and Blood Vessels
As a cardiologist and internist in Los Angeles, I find my patients here are a little more health conscious than they might be in Chicago, where I went to medical school. Try to take away people's Polish sausage and pierogi in the Windy City and you'll practically have a riot on your hands. At least in Los Angeles, cardiology patients know when to avoid such saturated fat-fests, and they have generally accepted doctors' recommendations to eat less red meat and more vegetables. But the best laid plans – and best-planned diets –often go astray. Because sometimes you just want a burger. And no matter how you slice it (grind it?), burgers have earned a bad reputation. Fry them and there's a gulf of grease; grill them and you'll get a charred carbon coating. If you're a burger lover, you don't see much in the way of good news these days. But recently, Dr. David Heber and his colleagues at UCLA published a study that examined the effect of adding avocado to a burger – and the results are pretty surprising!
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| Inflamed blood vessel |
The fat (lipids) in
hamburger meat is oxidized to lipid peroxides during cooking and in the
stomach. Lipid peroxidation produces harmful free radicals via a chain
reaction. These free radicals, also called ROS (reactive oxygen species), cause
inflammation on the endothelium (inside lining of the blood vessels, shown above). Inflammation is almost always a bad thing wherever it happens –
and inflamed blood vessels don't do what they're supposed to. You see, nitric
oxide (NO) occurs naturally in the body and one of its functions is to dilate
blood vessels so blood can flow through easily. Nitric oxide is a messenger
molecule that sends its message of vessel dilation to the endothelium. But
under oxidative stress from the free radicals, you have endothelial dysfunction
instead, and the blood vessels don't dilate properly. So-called bad cholesterol (LDL) accumulates inside arterial walls made
sticky by endothelial dysfunction (which is helped along by high blood glucose
levels – explaining why diabetics are seven times more likely to have vascular
disease). All of this leads to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and
the formation of blockages and blood clots, which can lead to heart attacks.
★And
this whole pernicious process begins after a big fatty meal (like a hamburger).
The Avocado: Your Anti-Inflammatory Advocate
Avocados are not exactly
low in fat or calories, but they are high in a healthy fat called oleic acid,
which is also present in olive oil. Compared to the fatty acids in red meat,
for example, oleic acid is much more difficult to peroxidize. The net effect of
this is that oleic acid acts as an antioxidant, and earlier studies have shown
that when people added avocados to their diet, their lipid profiles improved
(LDL levels decreased). So this formed the basis for Dr. Heber’s experiment.
I always found it funny that the French word avocat means both “advocate” (as
in a lawyer) and “avocado.” Well, according to Dr. Heber’s study, it turns out
that an avocado is a pretty good advocate when facing the inflammatory actions
of a burger! One of the ways we measure this inflammation is to look for the
presence of what are called pro-inflammatory cytokines, molecules that are
released under stress that promote inflammation at the cellular level. One such
molecule is called interleukin-6 (IL-6).
Burger Alone
So the researchers had test subjects eat a hamburger and took blood samples at
regular intervals. During digestion, IL-6 levels rocketed by over 70% over
baseline (before they ate the burger). In addition a sensitive test called PAT,
which measures the volume of peripheral arteries, showed significant
constriction of the arteries after the hamburger meal. Again, this is physical
evidence of decreased blood flow due to arteries being less flexible.
Burger + Avocado
Now a different group of
subjects was given a fresh, ripe Hass avocado on top of their burgers. After
they finished their meals, the same tests were conducted – with dramatic
results. Subjects who ate avocado with their burger:
• Had drastically reduced levels of the inflammatory marker IL-6 compared to
the burger-only group
• Showed hardly any constriction of their arteries as measured by the PAT
method compared to the burger-only group
Obviously, this is only one study, but these results are encouraging. So if you
just have to have that hamburger, make it a guacamole burger instead. Your
arteries will thank you.
The Avocado Queen
The Avocado Queen, Melissa, is a raw/live food vegan
who shares her authentic recipes that highlight her favorite food, the avocado, on one of her many healthy lifestyle blogs. Vegans and non-vegans alike can enjoy these
recipes that are packed with heart healthy vitamins and minerals that your body
need to function properly. We highly respect anyone advocating healthy eating lifestyles;
they affect the health of many by sharing the wisdom they have.
Indeed, bad cholesterol is one of the main problem of increasing heart disease around the world. According to what I have read from the article about l-arginine which tackles about how bad cholesterol can block a good blood flow within our heart going to different parts of our body.
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