Most of know the benefits of fiber. It helps to regulate our digestive system, makes us feel a lot better in terms of general health, and has been linked to decreasing our risk of colon cancer.
More good news about a high fiber diet is that it may help in the recovery of those who have had a heart attack.
A group of researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health wanted to see if fiber could help prolong the lives and good health of those who had suffered a cardiac arrest.
They studied more than 121,000 female nurses and more than 50,000 male health professionals and asked them to fill out questionnaires every two years, indicating their lifestyles and general habits.
Researchers then studied those in the group that had survived heart attacks and asked them to track their fiber intake. More than 2200 of the females in the overall survey had had heart attacks, as had more than 1800 men.
Over the nine years of the survey, 682 of the women and 451 of the men died. The diets of those who had heart attacks were analyzed and split into five groups, depending on the level of their fiber intake.
What was found was that those with high levels of fiber had the best chance of survival (for any reason) in the nine years post-heart attack. They had up to a 25 percent better chance, which is quite significant.
It was seen that 13 percent of the group with the highest fiber intake were also less likely to die from another cardiac condition during this nine-year follow up.
Interestingly, it was high fiber breakfast cereals that caused better chances of survival rather than other sources of fiber. So adopting a high fiber breakfast from cereals can really help a person’s chances of elongating life after a heart attack. This is something we should all know in order to better our chances!
Heart disease is the number one cause of death for women in the United States, even though it used to be considered more of a male disease. This isn't true at all but women do sometimes experience heart attack symptoms that are different to men.