The first thing I always say is that any condition can only develop due to four factors:
We can’t do anything about age, genetics and luck. We can however try the best we can to lead a good lifestyle. In terms of lifestyle, it is of course important to ensure that we get regular cardiovascular exercise, minimise our stress levels and maximise the quantity and quality of our sleep. Diet is very very important and whilst I always say it is important to eat in moderation, minimise processed foods and alcohol intake, i have never spoken about what kind of diet would be good to prevent Afib In my research to answer this question, i found an interesting paper which was published in the circulation journal in 2014. The lead author is Martinez-gonzalez and basically what the investigators did was about 7500 patients between 55- 80 years who had risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure , smoking etc but who did not have atrial fibrillation and randomly assigned them to one of 3 different diets: A mediterranean diet supplemented with extravirgin olive oil so they had to consume 50g or the equivalent of 4 or more table spoons of extra virgin olive oil daily A mediterranean diet supplemented with mixed nuts A control arm which consisted of advice to reduce all types of fat After a follow-up of 4.8 years the trial had to be stopped early because patients on the mediterranean diet had a lower risk of stroke and cardiac events. 72 patients developed Afib in the MEd+EVO group, 92 in the low fat diet group and 89 in the Med diet+ nuts group. They also found that there was 38% reduction in the relative risk of developing Afib in patients who were on the mediterranean diet which was supplemented with extravirgin olive oil. The investigators hypothesised that the reason for lower incidence of Afib in patients taking the mediterranean diet with extravirgin olive oil was due to the antifammatory effects on the oil. Fib is thought to be brought about by inflammation and inflammatory markers in the blood such as CRP are found to increase risk of Afib in the future.In this study the EVOO represented 22% of the total calories from the mediterranean diet. So i think that although we need lots more studies like this, if you are looking to change your diet for the sake of your heart health then i would recommend a mediterranean diet which is supplemented with at least 4 tbspoonfuls of EVOO.
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