Using ultrasound and blood tests on subjects to test the risks of a high-fat diet,
Dr. Paul J. Nestel demonstrates that the ability of arteries to expand is reduced by roughly 25% within 3-6 hours of ingesting high-fat foods!
The upside: Giving your kid a cigarette (for now) is cheaper than buying him a happy-meal.
Kidding-aside, I wonder what exactly is going on here. Is this purely a reaction to the type of fat?
-Ie: Saturated, -or worse-yet TRANS-fats from fried food?
-Or is there an excess of Omega 6 fatty-acids that are making this happen?
The risk of high-fat food seems to come from Saturated-Fat; so-far…
BUT: Could they re-run the test using the same quantity, but a different type of fat and see if it still restricted elasticity?
One interesting quirk of the experiment is that fat & cholesterol in the blood were unaffected by the high-fat meal.
This is probably because the meal ended-up being low-glycemic and the insulin-response was never exaggerated the way it is with fast-carbs.
High-fat food’s probable risk-factor: Damage to blood-vessels.
Either way, Dr. Nestel makes an interesting point that this type of meal may be doing daily-damage to arteries & could increase the risk for something like a heart-attack.
Another interesting point and understated risk of high-fat food: The reduced-elasticity also Raised Blood-Pressure, too!
Photo Credits: “spinning”, by Robert Aichinger
Links:
• Source: [Archived]PJ Nestel-High Fat Food
• Source Study: JACC-Post-prandial remnant lipids impair arterial compliance
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