Eat one egg every day to cut heart disease, stroke risk

Here is one heart health tip you cannot ignore. If you want to keep your heart healthy, and cut out risks of heart diseases and stroke, include at least one egg every day in your diet. Eggs often get a bad reputation for being loaded with cholesterol. But they also have several benefits.

Studies have shown that eating up to 12 eggs per week can reduce cardiovascular risk among patients with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. They are also loaded with protein and all 9 essential amino acids. They also contain a nutrient called lutein, which can keep your brain healthy later in life.An egg a day also cuts down risk of stroke by 12%. Now a new study shows that an egg a day may actually reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. While outside experts cautioned against reading too much into the study, its authors claimed that Chinese adults who ate an egg every day had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Studying half-a-million healthy adults aged 30-79 over almost nine years, researchers concluded that compared with non-consumers, daily egg consumption was associated with lower risk of CVD. Risk of haemorrhagic stroke was 26% lower among egg-eaters, the Chinese-British research team reported in the journal Heart. And daily egg consumption was associated with an 18% lower risk of death from CVD, and a 28% lower risk for death from haemorrhagic stroke. According to the World Health Organization, about 17.7 million people die of CVDs each year, almost a third of all deaths worldwide. Eighty percent of CVD deaths are caused by heart attacks and strokes.

Smoking, not exercising enough, and eating an unhealthy diet high in salt and low in fresh fruit and vegetables, increase the risk. Eggs are rich in dietary cholesterol, long linked to a higher CVD risk, but also contain crucial protein and vitamins. “The present study finds that there is an association between moderate level of egg consumption (up to 1 egg per day) and a lower cardiac event rate,” the authors concluded. But experts not involved in the study, said the results fail to prove that eating eggs actively lowers CVD risk. “An important limitation of this present study is that the people who consumed eggs regularly were much more affluent than those who avoided them,” University College of London nutrition specialist Tom Sanders said.