Healthy Living: Can dairy reduce risk of heart disease?

SEATTLE - Nutritionists and dietitians for years have been advising that people lower their dairy inake. However, a large international study just released, shows a link in a high consumption of dairy, especially whole-fat varieties, with lower risk of diabetes and heightened cardiovascular disease risk or metabolic syndrome. 

Dr. Drew Oliveira, the Senior Medical Executive Director with Regence Blueshield says, “Those people who had two or more helpings of full-fat not low-fat dairy products a day had a lower incidence of metabolic syndrome and diabetes.”

The study took place over 9 years and followed more than 150,000 people over 21 countries.

Dr. Oliveira says while more research is needed, the results were pretty notable, “Some of the reductions were fairly significant, those with the higher fat dairy intake had a 24% lower incidence of metabolic syndrome after 9 years and about a 12% reduction in the prevalence of diabetes at that 9 year mark.”

There are some issues though as people with these conditions already may not necessarily benefit from the adjustment, as dairy products are a major source of saturated fats. Dr. Oliveira says, “People with diabetes have a higher risk of heart disease, we typically recommend a lower fat diet.”

While the study was not able to show dairy was the cause of the outcomes, there was in fact a link. So now, you may be wondering are you supposed to add more full-fat dairy products into your diet. Dr. Oliveira says not so fast, “Not something that we would jump to making a clinical recommendation on diet but certainly something we need to look into further from a research perspective.”

To read the full study, click here.