Apple A Day May Keep Heart Problems Away

Recommending an apple a day to all adults ages 50 years and over may prevent or delay approximately 8,500 deaths due to heart attacks and strokes every year, in the United Kingdom alone.  Further, the protective effect of a daily apple may be equivalent to giving statins to everyone over 50 years who is not already taking them.   Adam Briggs, from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom), and colleagues utilized a mathematical model to analyze the effect of prescribing either of statins data does not already taking one, or an apple a day to everyone ages 50 years and over, on the most common causes of vascular mortality.  The resulting data that suggested that offering a daily statin to 17.6 million more adults would reduce the annual number of vascular deaths by 9,400, but offering a daily apple to 70% of the total UK population aged over 50 years (22 million people) would avert 8,500 vascular deaths.  Further, the diet-based intervention of an apple a day of diverted the side effects of statins prescriptions, which can include muscle disease (myopathy) and diabetes. Writing that: "Both nutritional and pharmaceutical approaches to the prevention of vascular disease may have the potential to reduce UK mortality significantly,” the study authors conclude that: "a 150 year old health promotion message is able to match modern medicine and is likely to have fewer side effects.”