Chocolate good, steroids bad for heart function
No, no, we only think we already knew it!
The destructive effects of illicit anabolic steroids on heart function, as well as the helpful effects of chocolate consumption, may be widely assumed by physicians and patients. But two new studies -- published in the American Heart Assn.’s journal Circulation: Heart Failure -- actually deliver the evidence.
We know that eating chocolate -- particularly dark chocolate -- lowers blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease. But a study, published online on Monday, finds that it protects women, at least, against heart failure as well. Researchers followed 31,823 Swedish women ages 48 to 83 for nine years and tallied their chocolate consumption. For those who ate one to three servings of chocolate per month, their risk of heart failure fell 25%. Those who ate one to two servings of chocolate per week saw a 30% reduction in risk during the study period.
(Sorry, but higher intakes did not provide the heart any additional protection. And the authors of the study suggest that the Swedish women likely consumed darker chocolate, with higher flavonoid content, than Americans typically eat.)
We know too that illicit steroid use raises a person’s risk of liver damage, infertility and psychiatric problems. But studies of its effect on cardiovascular disease have, to date, returned inconsistent results.
A second study, in the July issue of Circulation: Heart Failure, notes that only now are many long-term illicit steroid users reaching middle age, when insults to the heart generally begin to accumulate, causing heart failure. All told, about a million Americans are thought to have used anabolic steroids, and their illicit use by bodybuilders and athletes became widespread in the 1980s.
In this small study, 12 long-term users and seven non-users of anabolic steroids -- all seemingly healthy -- underwent a battery of tests of their hearts’ structure and function. Compared with non-users, those who had illicitly used anabolic steroids over several years had far poorer heart function than those who did not -- particularly in the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber. Poor left-ventricle function puts patients at far higher risk of heart failure.
“Our results suggest that cardiac impairment” in long-term users of anabolic-androgenic steroids “may be more severe than previously reported,” write the authors, from Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cardiology Department and McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility associated with Harvard Medical School.
-- Melissa Healy / Los Angeles Times
