Post Menopause: Eat Bananas, Salmon and Sweet Potato To Cut Stroke Risk

Hot on the heels of my salmony lunch recipe today is a good reason to eat more of it, especially if you are post-menopausal:

New research has found that potassium-rich foods such as bananas may cut the risk of having a stroke by as much as a quarter.  This was a large-scale study conducted for around 11 years, involving 90,137 post-menopausal women, aged 50-79.  All women were stroke-free at the start of the study and their average potassium intake was 2,611mg per day.  (The World Health Organisation recommends women consume at least 3,510mg potassium per day, and only 16.6% of the women studied met or exceeded that amount.)

The study, published in the American Heart Association Journal, found that the women who ate the most dietary potassium were 12% less likely to suffer strokes in general and 16% less likely to suffer an ischaemic stroke (where blood to the brain is cut off) than women who ate the least.   In addition, the women who ate the most potassium were 10% less likely to die prematurely than those who ate the least.

In addition to bananas, other potassium-rich foods include white beans, sweet potatoes, dark green leafy vegetables and salmon.

Source: Natural Health Practice enews Sep 14