`Mediterranean Diet Linked to Less Inflammation - Olive Oil Times

Mediterranean Diet Linked to Less Inflammation

By Elena Paravantes
Apr. 15, 2014 17:27 UTC

Italian researchers have found that adher­ence to a Mediterranean diet is asso­ci­ated with lower lev­els of inflam­ma­tion mark­ers that are linked with increased risk of coro­nary heart dis­ease.

It is believed inflam­ma­tion is asso­ci­ated with a higher risk of heart dis­ease. Platelet (PLT) and white blood cell (WBC) counts are two mark­ers of inflam­ma­tion and have been linked to the risk for car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease. The Mediterranean diet has also been asso­ci­ated with less inflam­ma­tion and reduced risk of sev­eral chronic dis­eases such as heart dis­ease, can­cer and dia­betes.

In this study that was pub­lished in the Journal of the American Society of Hematology, the inves­ti­ga­tors set out to eval­u­ate the effect of the Mediterranean diet on platelet and white blood cell counts. Their research included 14,586 indi­vid­u­als from the Moli-sani study, a large epi­demi­o­log­i­cal pop­u­la­tion study in the Molise region in Italy that is focus­ing on the mech­a­nism of inflam­ma­tion.

The results showed that indi­vid­u­als who had a high adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet had lower lev­els of PLT and WBC counts com­pared to those with lower adher­ence rates. It is noted that dietary antiox­i­dants such as those found in olive oil, wine and veg­eta­bles and also dietary fiber par­tially accounted for this asso­ci­a­tion.


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