Study: DASH Diet Inadequate For Controlling Blood Pressure

Filed under: Study — @ June 5, 2007

In the infamous Stanford JAMA study released in March 2007, researchers found the Atkins low-carb diet was most effective not just for weight loss, but also improvements in certain health markers–including reducing blood pressure.

Now there’s a new study confirms that a high-carb, low-fat diet indeed leads to an increase in blood pressure. The reason why will astound you!

Lead researcher Dr. Meena Shah, associate professor of clinical nutrition at the Dallas, TX-based University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and her team of researchers wanted to see if the highly-touted high-carb, low-fat Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet was the best way to treat high blood pressure.

What did the researchers find? The high-carb, low-fat diets caused “significantly higher” systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure than the low-carb, high-monounsaturated fat diets did. Despite this, Dr. Shah and her researchers are not pushing for “making recommendations to alter the carbohydrate and monounsaturated fat content of the diet to manage blood pressure.”

UGH! Find out why this conclusion by the researchers is especially frustrating in light of previous research and the surprising source of these increases in blood pressure by clicking here.