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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Lifestyle -> 
Vegans might have higher stroke risk
    2019-09-06  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

NON-MEAT diets have soared in popularity with many people ditching beef, pork and chicken in pursuit of health and environmental benefits and concerns about animal welfare.

However, a new study suggests that vegetarians and vegans may be at a higher risk of stroke than their meat-eating counterparts — although those who don’t eat meat have a lower chance of coronary heart disease, according to the new paper, published in the medical journal the BMJ on Wednesday.

“It does seem that the lower risk of coronary heart diseases does exceed the higher risk of stroke, if we look at the absolute numbers,” said lead researcher Tammy Tong, a nutritional epidemiologist at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford.

This is the first study to look at the risk of stroke in vegetarians, said Tong. The research found that vegetarians and vegans had a 20 percent higher risk of stroke than meat-eaters, particularly hemorrhagic stroke — caused when blood from an artery begins to bleed into the brain. This translates to three more cases of stroke per 1,000 people over 10 years.

The exact reasons for this higher risk found in vegetarians are not clear, said Tong. It is possible that this is due to “very low cholesterol levels or very low levels of some nutrients,” she said.

“There is some evidence which suggests that very low cholesterol levels might be associated with a slightly higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke,” she said. Similarly, other research points to deficiencies of some nutrients, like vitamin B12, may be linked to a higher risk of stroke, said Tong.

People following a pescetarian diet did not have a significantly higher rate of stroke, the study found.

This could be because fish-eaters’ cholesterol levels are not as low as the vegetarians’, explained Tong. They are also unlikely to be vitamin B12 deficient, “because you can get some B12 from fish and other animal products that they do eat,” she said.

Whereas “vegetarians and vegans have very low consumption of animal products, the only way they can get B12 is from either supplements or fortified foods,” she added. (SD-Agencies)

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