From: red_trek@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Iron and your heart: another article
Date: 15 Sep 92 15:20:16 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon Computer Club

I'm typing in the following article without permission from  the Sept. 21,
1992 issue of Newsweek magazine, published/distributed here in teh United
States.  Article in "Medicine" section, page 69.


                      "Bad News for the Geritol Set"
                   ("New signs that iron may ccause heart attacks")


Heart disease is the Western world's leading killer, yet until they reach
menopause, women are miraculously spared.  What's their secret?
Few mmedical researchers have bothered to ask.  They're interested
in avoidable risks, and they figure sex diferences are a fact of life.
Dr. Jerome Sullivan isn't  so sure.  The gender gap has led
Sullivan, a pathologist at the Veterans Administration Medical 
Center in Charleston, S.C. to some tantalizing thoughts about heart
disease in general.  He suspects that menstrual bleeding protects
women's hearts by reducing the amouhnt of iron in their bodies --
and he reasons that others could get the same effect by donating an 
occassional unit of blood.  The theory is still far from proven.  But it
got a dramatic boost last week, when researchers published  a new
study demonstrating a direct link between heart disease and
high iron levels in nearly 2,000 Finnish men.  Of the 19 risk
factors monitored in the study, only smokihg was a stronger predictor
of illness.  If further reserach bears it out, the new finding
could revolutionize teh study of heart disease, and chnage the
way we think about prevention.

Iron is a vital nutrient, and the high levels contained in
a meat-rich Western diets have long been presumed safe.  But Sullivan
has identified several trends suggesting that the dangers of "normal"
iron levels may dwarf those of high cholesterol.  For example,
women's cholesterol levels change little after menopause, yet 
their iron levels rise sharply, and so do their heart-atttack
rates.  Experts have traditionally blamed hormonal changes for the
sudden surge in cardiovascular illness.  But Sullivan
challenged that notion in a landmark 1981 article.  Drawing on
data from the nation's largest risk-factor survey, he
showed that surgical removal of the uterus (the site of menstrual
bleeding) causes an increase in heart-attack risk even if the ovaries
are left to produce estrogen.  the implication seemed ob vious:
without menstrual bleeding, teh body retains more iron, and
that iron somehow damages the cardiovascular system.

Sullivan's proposal met a wall of silence, but he kefpt fding new
uses for it.  Unlike mainstream thinking, the iron hypothesis
accounted logically for the fact that young women with a gentic
disorder cuasing extrmely high cholsterol rearely suffer any
consequences until after menopause.  It also helped explain
the enigma of Seventh-day Adventist men,who experience only
half as many heart attacks as one would expect to see among
nonsmokers with average cholestrol counts.  Seventh-day
Adventists eat eggs and dairy products freely, but their diet
is devoid of iron-rich meats.  Most important, the iron
hypothesis made sense of puzzling global disease patterns.
In a 1989 study, harvard chemist Randall Lauffer showed
 that while a country's average cholestrol reading may
not correspond directly to its heart-attack rate, its combined
cholesterol-and-iron count usually does.

_Hard Numbers_:     What the iron theorists lacked, until last week,
was a controlled study showing what happens to otherwise
similar people who have different iron levels.  From 1984
through 1989, Dr. Jukka Salonen and his colleagues at the
University of Kuopio plotted heart attack rates against 
iron levels and 18 other risk factors in 1,931 men from 
eastern Finland.  The results were astounding.  Taken by
itself, the level of so-called bad cholestrol (LDL) in a 
man's blood didn't significantly affect his heart-attack rate.
The level of ferritin (the protein that houses iron in the
bloodstream) affected it dramatically:  every 1 percent
variation in ferritin brought a 4 percent difference in risk.
Heart attacks were twice as common in men with ferritin counts
over 200 than in those with lower readings.  And men with both high
iron _and_ high choleserol were fully four times as likely 
to be stricken.

Arresting as they are, the Finnish findings don't close the case 
against iron.  Even if iron is the villain it appears to be, no one yet 
kneows whether lowering people's iron levels will prevent heart
 attacks.  But finding out should be easy.  By giving up three
 units of blood each year, the average man could achieve the 
iron status of a premenopausal woman.  To gauge the effects
of that regimen, a researcher would need only to follow a large
group of regular blood donors for  several years, comparing ther
 heart-atta`ck rates with those of qualified nondonors.  Sullivan 
proposed just such a study 11 years ago, when he first floated his 
hypothesis.  In light of the new evidence, perhaps he or someone else
will finally get the support to carry it out. 

Should we be changing our lives in the meantime?  Dr. Basil Rifkind,
a cardiovascular expert at the National Heart , Lung and Blood
Institute, favors holding out for stronger evidence.  "I don't
think we can advise the public on the basis of a single study,"
he says.  But other sthink modest precautions are laready in order.
knowing your iron level can't hurt; large diagnostic labs 
now offer iron readings as part of a basic blood workup.  
And unless you have a serious deficiency, iron supplements are 
not a good idea.  Avoding meat (espeically liver) and fortified 
cereals may be prudent as well.  No one can yet say that becoming
a regular blood donor will save your life, but it's harmless--
and it may help save someone else.

      ---by:  Geoffrey Cowley with Mary Hager in Washington
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg