How high-fat meal sets stage for heart disease – Study

Scientists have said meals high in fat can easily and quickly transform our healthy red blood cells into small, spiky cells that wreak havoc inside our blood vessels .

The meals also help set the perfect stage for cardiovascular disease, they said .

Just four hours after consuming a milkshake made with whole milk, heavy whipping cream and ice cream, healthy young men also had blood vessels less able to relax and an immune response similar to one provoked by an infection, a team of the Medical College of Georgia scientists reported in the journal, Laboratory Investigation.

The scientists also stated in their report that while the dramatic unhealthy shift was likely temporary in these healthy individuals, there was a definite cumulative toll from this type of eating and that their study could help explain isolated reports of deaths and or heart attacks right after eating a superhigh fat meal.

An eminent scholar in Cardiovascular Medicine and Associate Director of MCG’s Vascular Biology Centre, Dr. Neal Weintraub, said, “We see this hopefully as a public service to get people to think twice about eating this way.”

Dr. Julia Brittain, a vascular biologist at the MCG Vascular Biology Centre and a corresponding author said, “The take-home message is that your body can usually handle this if you don’t do it again at the next meal and the next and the next.”

Weintraub, also a corresponding author, advised patients with cardiovascular disease who continued to eat high-fat diet to think twice: “is this food worth your life?” he asked.