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Michel de Lorgeril, Patricia Salen, Pascal Defaye, Importance of nutrition in chronic heart failure patients
, European Heart Journal, Volume 26, Issue 21, November 2005, Pages 2215–2217, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehi490The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Editors of the European Heart Journal or of the European Society of Cardiology.
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This editorial refers to ‘The effect of micronutrient supplementation on quality-of-life and left ventricular function in elderly patients with chronic heart failure’† by K.K.A. Witte et al., on page 2238
The incidence of chronic heart failure (CHF), the common end-result of most cardiac diseases, is increasing steadily in most countries.1 In recent years, most of the research efforts on CHF have focused on drug therapies and devices (implantable defibrillators and resynchronization), and little attention has been paid to non-pharmacological approaches, and particularly to nutrition. Only recently, it has been recognized that increased oxidative stress, for instance, may be involved in the pathogenesis of CHF.2 The intimate link between diet and oxidative stress is obvious, knowing that our body derives its main antioxidant defences from essential nutrients (meaning that they are necessarily obtained from foods).
Although it is generally considered that a diet high in sodium is harmful (and may result in acute decompensation of CHF through a volume overload mechanism), little is known about the other aspects of diet in CHF, in terms of both general nutrition and micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals. In CHF patients, it is important not only to properly screen for and aggressively treat the traditional risk factors of coronary heart disease (CHD) (the main cause of CHF), such as high blood pressure and cholesterol (because they can aggravate the syndrome), but also to recognize and correct malnutrition and deficiencies in specific micronutrients. Some macronutrients such as essential fatty acids (discussed subsequently) may even be critical.
