When analyzing the abstracts below it isevident from most of the studies shown that DASH diet does have an associationwith lower risk of CVD. Different causes and risks such as plasma lipids,mortality rate and strokes that are associated with CVD were studied in detail andshown with positive and significant outcomes.
There were two different types of studies carriedout on the same set of participants. Appel et al studied the overalleffect of DASH diet on blood pressure and the Obarzanek et al (2001) focusedon DASH diet on plasma lipids. The participants in both studies constituted of459 adults. In both studies, participants were given either a combination dietof fruitsvegetables, reduced saturated and total and low-fat dairy products ora diet rich in just fruits vegetables. In both cases the combination diet wasfar more effective.
For instance, in Appel et al (1997) study, the combinationdiet reduced the diastolic pressure by 5.5 and 3.0 mm Hg and even shown to belower in the 133 subjects who were hypertensive with a decrease of systolic anddiastolic blood pressure by 11.4 and 5.
5 mm. Obarzanek et al study (2001) onplasma lipids showed reduction in lower total, and HDL which did not effecttriacylglycerol which meant that there could be lower risk of CVD. Both thestudies were convincing to show that DASH diet is linked with lower of CVD.
Although the results were significant the population size is too smalltherefore the results cannot be entirely reliable. However, the equal balance ofmales and females as well as race or ethnic background was taken intoconsideration. The drastic results in hypertensive subjects also made theresults more reliable. Two other cohort studies carried out regarding malesand female population separately to understand the risk association betweenDASH diet and strokecoronary disease in women and the overall associationbetween DASH diet and CVD risk in males.
Most importantly both studiesrelied on the adherence score where a DASH score that is high meant there was a lower the risk of CVD. Fung et al (2008)studied strokecoronary disease in women, 88517 female nurses who werefree of CVD were recruited. The results showed relative risk (RR) for total CHD witha high dash score and RR of 0.76 which is statistically significant. Th 95%interval does not contain 1 (0.64?0.
84) therefore there is a statisticallysignificance association between a high dash diet and low risk of coronaryheart disease. Similarly, Mertens et al (2017) studied 1867 men betweenthe ages 56-60 years who were free of CVD. The highest DASH score of 3indicated a RR of 0.81 (0.66?0.99).
The intervals do not contain 1 therefore wecan conclude that a DASH diet lowers the risk of CVD. In both studies theresults were convincing enough to show the link between DASH diet and risk ofCVD. Both studies had large population studied for long period of time howeverFFQ surveys can be a limitation to this study. The last study showed that DASH diet lowersrisk of all cause mortality with hazard ratio of 0.69 with CI (0.52-0.
92) whichdoes not include 1 thus showing statistically significant results (Parikh etal,2009). In conclusion, it can be said that all 5 studies wereconvincing enough to showcase that DASH diet is linked with low risk of CVD.The studies were carried out for a long period of time with proper follow upsand equal number of diverse males, females and race. The study done onmortality rate was interesting to showcase that overall a DASH diet does affecta lower all cause mortality rate.