Food as Medicine: New Study Aims to Find Links That Can Aid Recovery from Heart Failure

More than 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, declared, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Now a team of experts at Stanford University and the University of California at San Diego is about to test the theory.

As the principal investigators, Cheryl Anderson (San Diego) and Christopher Gardner (Stanford), explain, their Food Is Medicine for Patients with Heart Failure pilot study aims to discover whether medically tailored meals can benefit these folks. To find out, they are partnering with the American Heart Association to enroll 60 adults with a congestive heart failure diagnosis, 18 years of age or older, and whose diet could definitely be improved.

The volunteers will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first will get 15 tailored meals plus snacks each week for 12 weeks. The second will get 14 meals a week, no snacks. Each meal will conform to the “Healthy Eating Index” (HEI), a measure of diet quality used to assess how well a set of foods aligns with key recommendations and dietary patterns published in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans standards set out on USDA’s Healthy Eating Index Resources page.

The primary objective is to check the quality of the diet being consumed in Week 12 of the study to assess how satisfying the volunteers found the food, plus how well they stuck to the scheduled meals. Pragmatically, the study will also look at clinical measures, such as whether the meals improved blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight numbers. While the effort starts with patients living in the Golden State, once it ends, the conclusions will be available coast to coast.

As for the rest of us, right now the Gold Standard is the Mediterranean Diet, which the annual US News and World Report’s Best Diets has ranked No. 1 seven years in a row “because it’s easy to follow long-term and has been shown to support heart health, bone and joint health, and help prevent certain diseases, such as diabetes.”

Our food provides thousands of natural compounds that affect nearly every pathway and tissue in the body. Eating a wide variety of dishes delivers a number of beneficial components. In alphabetical order:

Antioxidants are natural chemicals that reduce inflammation and support the immune system. The stars of the bunch are the berries; blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, and raspberries, plus apples and avocados to enrich the nutrition alphabet. Nuts and seeds also contain antioxidants, as does green tea

Dietary fiber comes primarily from grains whose soluble and insoluble dietary fiber help regulate blood-sugar levels and keep food moving through the body to its inevitable end. USDA’s combined Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for adults age 31 to 51 is 25 grams for a woman and 38 for a man.

Healthful fats such as the omega-3 fatty acids in sardines, other fatty fish, and many nuts and seeds, reduce inflammation. More important, they do not clog your arteries.

Probiotics are friendly bacteria and yeasts that live in your gut, helping to ward off the less-friendly ones, thus boosting resistance to infection. While supplements are available, fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and plain sauerkraut put them right on your plate.

Proteins, which are made of amino acids, including nine essential ones, build and regulate body tissues and organs. Both plant and animal foods contain proteins, but the ones in beans and legumes such a garden peas are deemed incomplete because they lack one or more of the essential amino acids. Serving these foods with grains or animal foods completes the proteins. Think rice and beans, a tofu sandwich, or peas with melted cheese.