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Dear Colleagues and Friends,
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Cardiovascular and metabolic diseases
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Diet quality and dietary patterns
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Olive oil represents the primary source of fat in the traditional Mediterranean diet and has been previously associated with a reduced risk of developing several chronic diseases, supported by strong mechanistic evidence from experimental studies, demonstrating that specific components of olive oil have antihypertensive, antithrombotic, antioxidant, antiinflammatory and anti-carcinogenic action. These beneficial effects have been attributed to various bioactive compounds found in olive oil. For example, oleocanthal and oleacein (OC/OL) have shown important in vitro and in vivo antitumor properties, but data about their anticancer activity in humans is scarce. A new small-scale dietary intervention in patients at early stage of lymphocytic leukemia showed beneficial effects on hematological and apoptotic markers with high OC/ extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). These findings indicate that high OC/OL-EVOO could be a promising dietary feature for the improvement of chronic lymphocytic leukemia by inducing the apoptosis of cancer cells and improving the metabolism of patients.
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Another dietary strategy that has been hypothesized to improve health outcomes and body composition in the past few years is intermittent fasting. However, there is a lack of evidence about the effectiveness and safety of prolonged fasting in humans and most of the studies have focused on small samples of young participants in controlled environments. A recently published analysis from the Seniors Study on Nutrition and Cardiovascular Risk in Spain 2 (Seniors-ENRICA-2) cohort assessed the association of habitual prolonged nightly fasting with cardiovascular, renal, inflammation, and nutritional status biomarkers among community-dwelling older adults. This study showed that habitual nightly fasting of ≥12 hours per day was associated with higher concentrations of potassium, and with lower concentrations of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) and chloride after adjusting for adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Overall, findings suggested that extended periods of time between meals is not beneficial for older adults.
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Despite the increasing relevance of dietary approaches on preventing and managing health conditions, it is still not commonly considered in routine clinical care. In particular, practice guidelines for coronary heart disease (CHD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) clearly recommend promoting the Mediterranean dietary pattern (MDP). A new qualitative study explored multidisciplinary healthcare professionals' perspectives on recommending the MDP in routine care for patients with CHD or T2D, and barriers and enablers to its implementation. Results showed that the MDP was not routinely recommended in Australia, and four overarching themes were identified highlighting why this might be the case: current dietary practices, clinician-centered barriers to recommending MDP, organizational culture and resources influence dietary care, and perceived patient-centered barriers to implementation of MDP; greater detail of these themes is described in the full report. These factors should be addressed and further studied in different contexts in order to improve translation of evidence for dietary recommendations into practice.
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