The study involved 1,986 men and women who had had heart attacks. Responses to a health survey indicated that 158 of these had eaten a large meal within the 26 hours prior to their heart attack. The researchers found that an unusually large meal increases the risk for heart attack by ten times in the hour following the meal. The risk is four times as great after two hours, and is reduced completely after about three hours. While briefly increasing the risk for heart attack might not really matter when a person does not have other health problems, it may be significant for people already at risk because they have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
Researchers indicate that the largest predictor of the disease in kids is obesity.
Doctors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted a study of 688 rural children between the ages of 11 and 14. The study, which was presented at the annual scientific sessions of the American Heart Association in New Orleans, focused on the three major heart disease risk factors that can lead to insulin resistance. Researchers found that the children with only one of these risk factors were two to six times more likely to be obese than those without the risk factors. Those with two of the risk factors were eight to fourteen times as likely to be obese. It is fairly typical for people to have insulin resistance for up to ten years before they are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.