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Study Shows Drinking Water Cuts Risk of Heart Disease
A massive study that looked at 8,280 male and 12,017 female participants, ages 38 to 100, shows that drinking large amounts of plain water is as important as exercise, diet, even not smoking, in preventing coronary heart disease.
The paper, "Water, Other Fluids, and Fatal Coronary Heart Disease: The Adventist Health Study," was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology by researchers at Loma Linda University.
The study foundthat the California Seventh-Day Adventists in the study who drank five or more glasses of plain water a day had a significantly lower risk of fatal coronary heart disease compared to those who drank less than two glasses per day.
Dr. Jacqueline Chan, principle investigator and lead author of the article, says "Not drinking enough water can be as harmful to your heart as smoking." The study indicated that things like whole blood viscosity and plasma viscosity, which are considered independent risk factors for coronary heart disease, can be elevated by dehydration.
The degree of benefit from drinking plain water reportedly surpasses drinking a moderate amount of alcohol, taking aspirin, and other preventive measures - with none of the adverse side effects.
Reprinted from WQA News, December 2, 2002.