A Plant-Based Diet Significantly Reverses Heart Failure Symptoms, Study Finds
Heart failure used to be considered a one-way street toward infirmity, chronic illness, and ultimately death, in half of the cases, within five years. But a new study published this week shows that a plant-based diet can dramatically improve outcomes and even reverse symptoms in cases of heart failure, which is encouraging to say the least.
In the past, plant-based diets have been shown to improve the health of patients with heart disease, but this new research showed it can also improve the outcomes of patients with heart failure, by increasing blood flow, strengthening the heart's ability to pump blood to the body and allowing patients to be more active, while "lessening the effects obesity, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and diabetes," the report finds.
Study: "Plant-Based Diet: A Potential Intervention for Heart Failure"
The study, first published in Cureus, explains that plant-based diets have a positive effect even in patients suffering from advanced-stage heart failure, often defined as the inability of the heart to pump adequate blood to the body that it needs to function. "Heart failure is one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality in the world," the study authors write. "The disease prevalence is more than 5.5 million in the US alone and 23 million globally, the authors Faris A. Alasmre and Hammam A. Alotaibi point out.
Heart Failure Affects More Than Half a Million People a Year in the US
>More than one doctor has advocated that hospitals serve plant-based foods to patients but Dr. Saray Stancic has made a documentary, CodeBlue, to bring attention to the fact that nutrition is not used in hospitals as a medical treatment for anyone admitted with heart disease.