Medical Myth-Information
Less than 20 percent of U.S. adults with high blood pressure eat foods that align with government guidelines for controlling hypertension, a recent study found .
This outcome is no great surprise. The American Heart Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) have all deliberately mislead the public by spinning the results of the DASH-Sodium trial to indicate that most of the blood pressure benefits were the result of salt reduction. It is hard to say if this myth-information was the work of specific individuals within these organizations or the organizations themselves. What is critical, however, is that these organizations have not lived up to their responsibilities and barely promoted the importance of the DASH- or Mediterranean-type diet in reducing cardiovascular disease. Instead, they have adopted the magic-bullet, single nutrient approach and almost exclusively promoted salt reduction as the dietary approach to improve cardiovascular health. That is why so few U.S. adults now follow the DASH diet.
It is time that the credibility of these organizations comes under far greater public scrutiny. The recent disasters of hormone replacement therapy and the disasterous strategy to aggressively drive down blood sugar in diabetes patients are clear examples of our medical establishments doing harm with ill-considered policies and information.
The following graph encapsulates the results of the DASH-Sodium trial:
It is immediately apparent that moving from a regular U.S. diet (blue line) to a DASH-type diet (red line) has a far greater impact on blood pressure than lowering salt consumption. On the regular diet, dropping from the current level of sodium consumption to the recommended daily level of 2,300mg Sodium/day dropped the systolic pressure by an average of 2.1 mm Hg (mercury). However, changing from a regular U.S. diet to the DASH diet, without any changes to sodium consumption, reduced the systolic blood pressure by 5.9 mm Hg, almost three times the drop resulting from the sodium reduction! There is no equivalency here. The move to a DASH diet far exceeds the benefits of salt reduction - there is no comparison. This clearly explains why Mediterranean people enjoy an excellent cardiovascular status despite their high salt consumption, as mentioned in a previous article . With a DASH diet, the impact of sodium on the blood pressure of hypertensives is minimal (and is of no significance to normotensive people - the majority in the population). On top of that, the DASH- or Mediterranean-type diet has myriad other health benefits aside from reducing blood pressure.
Yet, the AHA, the AMA and NHLBI always spin the data to place the majority of the benefits on salt reduction first and then the DASH diet, almost as an afterthought. In lock step, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) repeats this in much the same manner.
What a pity that people take their advice!
No wonder we see headlines like, "Not many follow anti-hypertension diet " or "Fewer hypertensives adhering to DASH diet " or "Most With High Blood Pressure Do Not Follow Recommended Diet ". AHA, the AMA and NHLBI must all share in this predictable consequence of myth-direction.
