Relationship Of Fat To Heart Disease Assessed

Press, Volume C, Issue 29621, 18 September 1961, Page 10

Relationship Of Fat To Heart Disease Assessed

There was no doubt that a high content of cholesterol or fat in the blood was related to heart disease, said Dr. P. H. Wood, director of the London Institute of Cardiology, in Christchurch yesterday. Dr. Wood said there was one type of hereditary disease in particular which produced a very high blood-fat content and resulted in heart disease at an early age.

“But there is no proof that reducing a person's cholesterol content would reduce the likelihood of heart disease,” he said. “On the other hand there are strong indications that it might.” He said there were innumerable indications of the relationship between low blood-fat content and freedom from coronary thrombosis.

The African Bantu race and their low cholesterol level were commonly quoted as an example of this relationship. Heart disease was very rare with them, and the same relationship had been shown in people who had been deprived of cholesterol-produc-ing foods during the war. “But it may be too late for anyone who now has the disease to do any good by cutting down on those foods,” said Dr. Wood. “Science knows that it can’t change people’s customary diets much, but it is

doing other things to reduce cholesterol content in the blood.

“The amount of cholesterol is partly due to what we absorb in our food, partly what the liver manufactures, and partly what we burn up or excrete. "Diet can stop some of it getting in, and drugs can make it more difficult for the body to manufacture cholesterol,” he explained. "And exercise helps indirectly by burning it up Other drugs can help eliminate it.

“Each of these things has a 10 per cent, or 15 per cent, influence, so you can see that you have got something when you add them all together.”

Dr. Wood said he thought it would be five years before the value of lowering the blood's cholesterol content could be properly assessed. “My guess is that diet will be shown to be of slight value,” he said.