Heart Disease & Diabetes Are Largely Preventable

Maintaining better lifestyle habits — such as cutting back on junk food, eating more fish and exercising less — can help prevent 80 percent of coronary heart disease and 90 percent of type 2 diabetes.

Those are the findings to be presented Saturday by Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Harvard School of Public Health’s department of nutrition, at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, HealthDay reported.

"There is a huge potential for reducing the major causes of death, from cardiovascular disease and diabetes," said Willett, whose report is titled "Diet and Optimal Health: A Progress Report."

Dr. Willett based the estimates on his long-term study, the Nurses’ Health Study II, begun in 1989, and the original Nurses’ Health Study, which started 29 years ago, and dozens of other studies that have examined lifestyle habits and their effects on heart disease and diabetes.

People are "surprised" when they hear the figures of 80 percent and 90 percent, Dr. Willett said.

"But they shouldn’t be [surprised]. If you look back to Greece and Japan, they had heart-disease rates that were 90 percent lower" than the United States, a finding thought to be due to healthier diets.

We’re known for a long time there is potential for prevention," he added.

Dr. Willett recommends the following:

• Eat more whole grains and less refined carbs.
• Eliminate trans fats such as those found in vegetable shortenings, some margarines, crackers and many snack foods using partially hydrogenated oils. Trans fats are the worst kind of fat because of their effects on blood cholesterol.
• Eat fish twice a week to boost your intake of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids.
• You can have an alcoholic drink every other day, but people who don’t drink shouldn’t start for health reasons.
• Exercise — just a half an hour of day of brisk walking can help.
• Take a multi-vitamin to get enough folic acid.