Eating Fat Increases Risk of Arterial Damage
Aside from expanding your waistline, consuming too much fat can cause serious health risks. Most recently, researchers from the University of Cincinnati have discovered evidence that eating a high-fat diet – even for a short time – may cause dangerous inflammation of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. In the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers fed mice a high-fat diet for two weeks. They discovered that the fat cells surrounding each mouse’s coronary arteries became swollen, even in this short amount of time.
And since the coronary arteries supply oxygen and nutrients to the muscles of the heart, this swelling can cause a risk of major heart problems.
According to the study, a high-fat diet may be especially dangerous in part because the health risks can go unnoticed. The inflammation of the arteries does not appear to be connected to weight gain, the amount of lipids in the blood, or cholesterol levels, meaning that a person could have this condition without knowing it – one more good reason to avoid eating high-fat foods.
