A whole-grain diet may be beneficial in controlling hypertension and improving heart disease risk, according to a small, randomized study.
The trial found that overweight and obese adults who consumed a whole-grain diet had more than a three-fold greater improvement in diastolic blood pressure compared with those who adhered to a refined-grain diet.
Lead researcher John P. Kirwan, PhD, of the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues published their results online in the Journal of Nutrition on Oct. 19. The Cleveland Clinic researchers worked on the study with researchers from the Nestlé Research Center,
A Cleveland Clinic news release noted that the improvement in diastolic blood pressure was equal to reducing the risk of death from heart disease by almost one-third and the risk of death from a stroke by two-fifths.
“Heart disease and strokes are a leading cause of death in the United States,” Kirwan said in a news release. “This research shows that eating whole grains reduces the risk of heart disease.”
The researchers enrolled 40 participants who were less than 50 years old, were overweight or obese and had no known history of cardiovascular disease. They were randomized to a whole-grain or refined-grain diet for eight weeks, followed by a 10-week washout period. They then adhered to the diet they were originally randomized to for another eight weeks. The diets were the same except for the content of whole grains or refined-grains.
Of the participants, six men and 27 women completed the trial. The mean age was 39, and the mean body mass index was 33.1 kg/m2.
After the whole-grain diet, the participants had a mean 5.8 mm Hg decrease in diastolic blood pressure and a mean 0.1 decrease in plasma adiponectin. After the refined-grain diet, they had a mean decrease of 1.6 mm Hg and 1.4, respectively.
Both groups had substantial reductions in body weight, fat loss, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, according to the researchers.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.