nbcnews.com - The people with the healthiest hearts in the world live on a tributary of the Amazon River in Bolivia, filling up on starchy food, researchers reported Friday.
The Tsimane people walk, ride bikes or canoe everywhere. Their staple foods are home-grown rice, plantains and corn. If they want meat, they go catch it. And they don't watch television.
An 80-year-old Tsimane has about the same heart and artery health as the average American in his or her 50s, the team reports in the Lancet medical journal.
"The Tsimane, a forager-horticulturalist population of the Bolivian Amazon with few coronary artery disease risk factors, have the lowest reported levels of coronary artery disease of any population recorded to date," the team wrote. They're also presenting their findings to a meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
It's hard to find a Tsimane who has any evidence of clogged arteries at all, Ben Trumble of Arizona State University and colleagues reported.
"Most of the Tsimane are able to live their entire life without developing any coronary atherosclerosis. This has never been seen in any prior research," said Dr. Gregory Thomas of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, who worked on the study.
The group of about 16,000 people — not really a tribe, Trumble says — live as most of humanity did as we evolved. They have no electricity or running water and catch or raise all their own food.
The researchers studied more than 700 Tsimane volunteers, running scans of their arteries, testing their blood for cholesterol and glucose, measuring blood pressure and looking for evidence of inflammation. They looked specifically for calcium in the blood vessels — a signal that artery-clogging fat has built up and hardened.
These plaques can break off and cause heart attacks and strokes.
Most — 85 percent — had no evidence of calcification at all in their arteries, Trumble said. Those who do have very little.
"Tsimane men had lower coronary artery calcification scores than Japanese women, a population previously regarded as having the lowest coronary artery calcification scores reported for any ethnicity," the team wrote.
It's no surprise that people who eat no processed food and who exercise all day long would have little heart disease. What Trumble's team did was systematically demonstrate it.
These plaques can break off and cause heart attacks and strokes.
Most — 85 percent — had no evidence of calcification at all in their arteries, Trumble said. Those who do have very little.
"Tsimane men had lower coronary artery calcification scores than Japanese women, a population previously regarded as having the lowest coronary artery calcification scores reported for any ethnicity," the team wrote.
It's no surprise that people who eat no processed food and who exercise all day long would have little heart disease. What Trumble's team did was systematically demonstrate it. (ontinueReading
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