The best diet to prevent Afib

hi guys my name is Sanjay Gupta I'm a cardiologist in the UK in York now I firstly wanted to apologize to you for not having put up any videos for the last couple of months I think I'd tide myself out and desperately needed some time off but hopefully now as I'm feeling a lot better and rejuvenated I plan to start again so today's video is on the subject of atrial fibrillation and the role of diet in preventing a chole fibrillation making the first thing I always say that in any condition any condition can only develop because of four factors okay age genetics bad luck and lifestyle we can't do anything about our age we can't do anything about our genetics and we can't do anything about our luck we can however try and lead the best lifestyle we can and undoubtedly lifestyle matters because not only does a good lifestyle improve our quality of life but it also in some way it helps improve our length of life okay in terms of lifestyle it's very important to ensure that we get regular healthy cardiovascular exercise we minimize our stress levels and we maximize the quality and quantity of our sleep okay now diet is really really important and why I always say it's important to eat in moderation minimize processed foods and minimize alcohol intake and in terms of diets I generally think a plant-based diet is a very good diet for the heart I've never really spoken specifically about exactly what kind of diet is good in terms of preventing atrial fibrillation and I wanted to try and find this out because a lot of people write to me and say well what do you think I can do to prevent myself from getting atrial fibrillation so I decided to do some research and in my research to answer the question as to what kind of diet is best to reduce atrial fibrillation I found an interesting paper which was published in this circulation journal in 2014 and the lead author is a guy called Martinez Gonzalez and basically what the investigators did was they took about seven 1,500 patients who were aged between 55 and 80 years of age and they had risk factors such as diabetes high blood pressure smoking etc but they didn't have atrial fibrillation and they were assigned to one of three different diets again the first diet was a Mediterranean diet which was supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil so they had to consume 50 grams or the equivalent of four or more tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil in addition to the Mediterranean diet the second group had a Mediterranean diet which was supplemented with mixed nuts and the third group had was just taking their normal diet but they were advised to reduce all types of fat and basically what these guys did was they randomized these patients into one of these three diets and they followed them up over a number of years to try and have work out what happens to these patients and after four for four point eight years the trial actually had to be stopped early because people who were on the Mediterranean diet had a much lower risk of stroke and heart problems cardiac events heart attacks etc and so then so that so that was interesting because it told us that a Mediterranean diet is good for the heart but what about atrial fibrillation well over the course of this study what they found was that in the 72 people developed atrial fibrillation so 72 patients who'd never had atrial fibrillation developed atrial fibrillation in the group that took the Mediterranean diet which was supplemented with the extra-virgin olive oil 89 patients developed atrial fibrillation and the group that had the Mediterranean diet and nuts and 92 patients developed atrial fibrillation in the low-fat diet group and therefore when they did some statistical analysis they found that there was a 38 percent reduction in the relative risk of developing atrial fibrillation in patients who were taking a Mediterranean diet which had been supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil and the investigators hypothesized that the reason there was such a much lower incidence of atrial fibrillation and patients taking the met trainee and I put the extra virgin olive oil supplementation was due to the anti-inflammatory and the antioxidant effects of the oil okay because remember the group wood the nuts were also taking a Mediterranean diet but the only difference was that this group had extra-virgin olive oil at least four tablespoons whereas the other group didn't they had not so one could say that the benefit is largely brought about by the supplementation of extra-virgin olive oil and we know that atrial fibrillation is a condition that is brought about by inflammation and when you measure inflammatory markers in the blood like CRP interleukin 6 these are found to be elevated in patients who are at a higher risk of developing H or fibrillation and we also know that extra-virgin olive oil has these anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and that may be one reason why a diet rich in extra-virgin olive oil reduces the incidence of atrial fibrillation in patients so and then this study it's worth knowing that the extra-virgin olive oil contributed to about 22% of the total number of calories from the diet okay so I think this is an interesting study I think we need a lot more studies like this which actually look to see how lifestyle changes can improve our health or keep our health going rather than relying on expensive medications I don't know how much you can draw from this study conclusively because there's one such study and it wasn't specifically designed to look at atrial fibrillation it was designed to look at total heart event strokes heart attacks etc but it is an interesting study and it gives us some insight into what might be going on so if you're looking to make improvements in your lifestyle if you're 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 four tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil and so I hope this was useful to you as I say again I'm really sorry I haven't put any videos out I'm feeling a lot better and I will be putting more videos out soon thank you so much for listening I will paste the link to the study on my Facebook page and if you want to reach my Facebook page if you type in York York cardiology at gmail.com then you should that should take you to my facebook page working I have a website which is www.hyken.com

Channel: York Cardiology

Views: 334,205

Keywords: iMovie, atrial fibrillation, AF, Afib, Diet, MEditerranean, heart, healthy, arrhythmia, sanjay gupta, yorkcardiology, lifestyle, heart palpitations, palpitation

Id: GDJDP7Xg1G0

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2017