Manyindividuals suffer from different types of diseases but a very importantdisease to look after is cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease occurswhen the functions or structures of an individuals heart is affected.
Thecardiovascular system is very important to the human body because it keeps thebody functioning by distributing oxygenated blood throughout the body. Theeffects of cardiovascular disease may cause a heart attack or even heartfailure. There are many ways you can prevent your body from getting any type ofcardiovascular disease and a very common one is the DASH diet. A DASH diet isknown as a diet that is supposed to help lower hypertension. When an individualrestricts their food intake to only foods that are rich in protein and fiber,low in sugars and low-fat dairy products they are following a DASH diet. Thereare 5 different studies that were chosen to analyze and all 5 looks to see ifthe DASH diet has any affect in being able to reduce the risks of cardiovasculardisease.
When looking at all 5 of thestudies given, we can see that the DASH diet shows significant results ofpreventing or reducing the risk of disease. In the study of Appel el al (1997),the researcher is aiming to find results that show the effects of dietarypatterns on blood pressure. A downfall to this study is that it was only donein an 8-week period which is not long enough to be able to collect veryaccurate data to show that the DASH diet really helps blood pressure. This researcherhad males and female participants and of those there were 60% African American.By clearly stating which gender or background the participants are it makes iteasier for the researcher to come to an accurate conclusion and connect it backto the outside population. Personally, I would say that this study is not too convincingthat the Dash diet reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease because of thelength of the study.
In the study of Fung et al(2008) and Parikh et al (2009), the researchers both have done a prospectivecohort study which follows a group of individuals over an extended period oftime to see if the DASH diet lowers risk of stroke and CHD in women in the caseof Fung and blood pressure in the case of Parikh. By doing a study over a longperiod of time the data collected can show very convincing results because itallows the understanding of change over time.
