THE LOW-PRESSURE DIET

By Christine Gorman

As a group, nobody has lower blood pressure than vegetarians. But until now, scientists could only guess at what the reasons might be. Was it the absence of artery-clogging fat in their diet or something in the tofu that made their blood flow so smoothly? More to the point, is it possible for ordinary meat eaters with hypertension to reduce their blood pressure without going entirely macrobiotic?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. A study of 459 adults published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine showed for the first time that a diet that is low in saturated fat and combines lots of fruits and vegetables with low-fat dairy products can indeed reduce hypertension--and rather dramatically at that. Within two weeks, the blood pressure of the test subjects dropped significantly. By the end of the study, almost everyone on the combined diet saw their diastolic pressure drop an average of three to five points, or as much as 6%. Researchers calculate that if the entire population of the U.S. suddenly experienced a similar drop in blood pressure, the result would be 125,000 fewer strokes each year.

The diet worked equally well for whites and African Americans, says Dr. Thomas Vogt, an epidemiologist at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, who helped coordinate the study known in the field as DASH--for Dietary Approaches to Stopping Hypertension.

The changes in eating habits called for in the DASH diet are simple, but that does not necessarily make them easy to adopt. For one thing, you need to eat eight to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables each day--about twice the amount that most Americans consume. "It was definitely a challenge," says study participant Carol Long, 45, a systems analyst from Boston. "But it was worth it." Long, whose mother and grandfather both suffered strokes, saw her blood pressure drop 10%. "Now I eat fruits and vegetables all the time," she says. "And I'm trying to get my daughters to change their diet too."

--By Christine Gorman