WHI study on Low Fat diet in postmenopausal women

Ask your mum to forget about the salads and instead go for the Char Koay Teow and Nasi Lemak?

A large U.S. government study has found that a diet low in fat but high in vegetables, grains and fruits does not reduce the risk of breast cancer, colorectal cancer or cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women.

The Women's Health Initiative is a mammoth, 15-year study designed to identify the most common causes of death, disability and poor quality of life in postmenopausal women. The findings, which appear in three separate papers in the Feb. 8 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, involved almost 50,000 postmenopausal women age 50-79. The cost is estimated to be about US$400 million for the study.

Comments:

Point (1): Prevention of chronic disease with diet starts in your 20’s. Vessel damage (atherosclerosis & arteriosclerosis) starts as early as mid-20’s. Bear in mind with even borderline blood sugar levels there is already microvessel damage in progress. You should watch you diet in your 20’s, start supplementing with omega-3, ginkgo, antioxidants etc early and not when the disease process is advanced.

But in the study, there was a trend in lower risk of coronary heart diseases in a group of women who made the greatest reduction in saturated and trans fat. So it is not only reducing fat but eating the right types of FAT!

Point (2): the group taking the low fat diet did not achieve the targeted 20% of calories from fat, but instead achieved 24% first year into the study, and by the 6th year they were consuming average 29% of caloric intake from fats (average population is 30%).

Point (3): There was no reduction in colorectal cancer but there was a 9% reduction in colorectal polyps, a precursor for cancer.

Point (4): There was a 9% decrease in breast cancer which was not statistically significant (i.e.could happen by chance), but 7 years of the study is not long enough. Also the background rate seems high (42 cases per 10,000 women years (low fat); 45 cases per 10,000 women years (control group), as with the WHI HRT study the background rate for the control group was only 30 cases per 10,000 women years). Bear in mind the baseline was between 35-38% fat as their daily calories (i.e when they entered the study) which is on the high side.

Well, rubbish in à rubbish out. Just like the WHI study on Hormone Replacement Therapy. They spent US$650 million on a HRT study in women average age 63.6 years and found that is was not beneficial. But then which doctor would start a 63 year old on HRT! HRT best benefits peri-menopausal women 48-52 yrs of age.