Yahoo – AFP,
March 17, 2017
 |
| Most members of the Tsimane community, an indigenous Amazonian tribe, are active for between four and seven hours a day -- hunting, gathering, fishing and farming, the study found (AFP Photo/ANTONIO SCORZA) |
Paris (AFP)
- Researchers said Friday they had found an indigenous Amazonian tribe with the
lowest levels of artery hardening -- a portender of heart disease -- ever
observed.
And while
they hailed the group's "subsistence lifestyle" as a heart-protecting
factor, others cautioned against romanticising the community's hand-to-mouth
existence.
Known as
the Tsimane, the small forager-farmer community in Bolivia was five times less
likely to develop coronary atherosclerosis (artery hardening) than people in
the United States -- where it is a major killer, scientists wrote in The Lancet
medical journal.
They
pointed to the community's low-fat, high-fibre diet and non-smoking, physically
active lifestyle -- factors which most scientists agree contribute to good
health.
The study
was an observational one, meaning it merely uncovered a correlation between lifestyle
and heart health, and cannot conclude that one causes the other.
Yet,
"the loss of subsistence diets and lifestyles could be classed as a new
risk factor for vascular (blood vessel) ageing," study co-author Hillard
Kaplan of the University of New Mexico concluded.
"We
believe that components of this way of life could benefit contemporary
sedentary populations."
The Tsimane
diet comprises unprocessed, high-fibre carbohydrates such as rice, corn, nuts
and fruit, as well as wild game and fish.
The
community eats little fat, few smoke, and most are active for between four and
seven hours a day -- hunting, gathering, fishing and farming, the study found.
Observers
pointed out that while the Tsimane had lower levels of artery calcification and
heart disease, the most common age of death was 70, compared with about 80 in
most developed countries.
And these
were just the ones who survive childhood -- one in five die in the first year
of life.
"There
may not be many old Tsimane men with heart disease but that's probably because
only the fittest and healthiest Tsimane survive to old age," commented
Gavin Sandercock, a cardiology expert from the University of Essex.
For Tim
Chico, a University of Sheffield cardiologist, it is important "not to
romanticise" the Tsimane existence.
"Two-thirds
of them suffer intestinal worms and they have a very hard life without fresh
water sewerage or electricity," he said.
Rates of
diseases other than heart disease were much higher in the Tsimane -- especially
of the infectious kind.
"So,
would I live like the Tsimane to reduce my risk of heart disease? No way,"
Chico said via the Science Media Centre in London.
Researchers
took CT scans of the hearts of 705 adults aged 40-94 in 85 villages in 2014 and
2015 for the study.
Based on
the results, they concluded that almost nine in 10 Tsimane people (85 percent)
had no risk of heart disease, 13 percent had a low risk, and only three percent
a moderate or high risk.
By
comparison, about half of Americans aged 45-84 have a moderate or high risk of
heart disease.
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