Prime Your Pump

For the last several years, Chicago attorney Karl Anderson, 52, has been eating high-fiber, low-sugar oatmeal and raisin bran for breakfast, often with a banana. Sure, he's tempted by the coffee cake and pastries on his kitchen counter. And he fondly remembers loving Cap'n Crunch and Cocoa Krispies as a kid. "But I know those aren't good for you," he says.

Today Anderson feels better than ever about his choice. That's because a study of 21,376 male physicians, published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that men who eat whole-grain cereal have a lower incidence of heart failure than men who don't. "I'm happy to hear it," says Anderson. (The whole-grain study is part of the ongoing Physicians' Health Study.)

Though past studies have found an association between whole-grain-cereal consumption and a lower risk of heart disease and high blood pressure, this is the first major study of whole-grain-cereal consumption and congestive heart failure. (In CHF patients, the heart cannot pump enough blood to the body's other organs.) Researchers saw a 28 percent decrease in the risk of developing heart failure in men who ate whole-grain cereal at least seven times a week, and a 22 percent decrease in men who ate it two to six times per week. The National Institutes of Health, not cereal makers, funded the study.

The study is good news, because it's so easy to eat whole-grain cereal. "This is something everybody can do," says dietitian Linda Van Horn, a nutrition researcher and professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University. "This is a practical, low-tech kind of response to a public health problem that is huge and takes a major toll on American lives. It is especially important because it demonstrates that indeed diet really does make a difference."

"It's another feather in the cap of whole grains," says New York dietitian Milton Stokes, a spokesman for the American Dietetic Association. He cautions that the study is "not conclusive" since it simply looked at associations based on participant-reported dietary intakes. But he also says no one can go wrong with choosing whole grains over processed foods.

Just why does whole-grain cereal seem to reduce the risk of heart failure? The best bet: its high fiber and potassium content, says Dr. Luc Djousse, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Potassium lowers blood pressure, one of the major risk factors for heart failure. "We think it works along these lines: that a combination of fiber, potassium and other minerals would lower your blood pressure and improve insulin utilization by the body, and thereby prevent obesity and heart disease," says Djousse. "All these mechanisms are contributing to a lower risk of heart failure." Though the study looked at men, Djousse believes the results would hold true for women, too.