Association between Canned Food and Heart Disease

Pay more attention to canned food. That’s the message that I want to deliver today. Do you know that the canned foods could contain dangerous chemical called BPA? BPA stands for Bisphenol A. It is contained in plastic linings in food cans. You can also find BPA in containers made of hard plastic. Many studies have found that this substance is very dangerous to our health. If you continue reading this article, you will find that there is another study that proves that there is potential link between BPA and heart disease.

Heart Disease

Hearth disease is a very dangerous disease. Sometimes people doesn’t realize its existence in their body, and once it attacks, it could be fatal. Generally, heart disease can be detected by these five major symptoms:

• Pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, or back
• Feeling weak, light-headed, or faint
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Pain or discomfort in arms or shoulder
• Shortness of breath (source: www.cdc.gov)

Heart attack happens when the blood supply to the heart muscle is cut off. Since the cells in the heart muscle do not receive enough oxygen, they begin to die. Heart attack shall be immediately treated to avoid greater damage of the heart.

The statistic about the heart attack is quite scary. Based on the data from American Heart Association, about 785,000 Americans have an initial heart attack and another 470,000 have a recurrent heart attack each year (Source: www.cdc.gov).

Urine Samples

NHANES (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) has collected urine samples of thousands of adult and children to observe the exposure of the BPA. They have published a new analysis data on 13 January 2010 to add more evidence for an association between heart disease and higher exposures to BPA.

It was David Melzer, an epidemiologist at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom and his colleagues who did the observation. He took the NHANES data collected from 2003 and 2004. The result was published in 17 September 2008, and it showed an association between higher levels of BPA metabolites in urine and adverse adult health outcomes, including heart disease. He analyzed the NHANES data from 2005 and 2006 to once again show us that there is an association between coronary heart disease and higher urinary BPA.

Surprising Result?

Although the result was quite surprising for me, but there are some opinions that question the method of the study.

While this study may help inform future research, such cross-sectional studies “should not be used to demonstrate that a particular chemical can cause a particular effect,” said Steven G. Hentges of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council in a 13 January 2010 press release. Source: Environmental Health Perspectives.

The Best Thing to Do

Whatever the experts say, there is one clear important message for us. The food that we eat, whether we realize it or not, could have adverse effects to our health. The introduction of new substances, new packages, and new process, might bring another threat to our health. So, start to pay attention to what you eat, keep reading the latest news and issues and start protecting your health and environment now!