Carbs tied to heart risk

Carb-based diets are bad for everyone... but a new study shows how they can be especially destructive to women.

You might know how these diets can lead to big, bulging bellies, and how the sugars can rot your teeth right out of your mouth. But the latest research finds that loading up on carbs can also double your heart disease risk.

Italian researchers say the problems are caused by simple carbohydrates--foods highest on the glycemic index, which are most quickly converted into sugar inside the body.

Most of these are forms of sugars or highly refined carbs like white bread that you should be avoiding anyway... yet these are the foods that most of us are eating morning, noon and night.

It's the starchy white backbone of the modern American diet of disease.

The researchers studied data on 15,171 men and 32,578 women collected over eight years, and found that women who consumed the most total carbs had twice the heart risk as those who ate the fewest... but that the association was mostly caused by foods high on the glycemic index.

In fact, these women had 2.25 times the risk of heart disease than women who ate low-glycemic foods.

Of course, this isn't especially new--but the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine confirms the dangers of these foods. Other studies, including the Nurses Health Study conducted here in the United States, have also found a heart risk for women from carbs.

The researchers say they did not see the same risk in men... but that doesn't mean it's not there. Since a lifetime of carbs will make anyone, male or female, fat and diabetic, you'll eventually face that heart disease risk anyway--along with a host of other health problems.

The easiest way to avoid these risks is to avoid the carbs--especially the deadly simple sugars. In an ideal world, you should minimize all your carbs, but cutting back on sugars and other high- glycemic foods is a great place to start.

To learn more about them, check out the Glycemic Index Web site.The site has a searchable database, which shows you not only where each food ranks on the glycemic index, but what the overall carb load is as well.

I've got some more news on women's health today--keep reading for a simple vitamin that can lower your breast cancer risk.