Jodie Sinnema, CanWest News Service

Published: Tuesday, July 31, 2007

EDMONTON — Everybody knows that eating a lot of fat — the wrong kind of fat — can cause a heart attack. That’s the bad news.

Now here’s the worse news: researchers from the University of Alberta have discovered foods rich in trans and saturated fats can also botch up the electricity in your heart, worsening the severity of heart attacks and increasing the risk of death.

For the first time, researchers have discovered that not only do “bad” fats affect the vessels of the heart, but they also affect the heart cells and can disrupt the rhythm of electricity flow in a heart.

“We can see a clear link between diet and the way your heart cells may contract,” said Peter Light, a pharmacologist and a researcher at the Mazankowski Heart Institute, which is set to officially open next year. His research is published in the European Molecular Biology Organization Journal.

“We know these fats are bad for you and it does sort of strike common sense, but what it does highlight is another reason to avoid those trans and saturated fats in your diet.”

The heart burns fat as an energy source to beat more than 100,000 times a day, but Light discovered bad fats stored in the heart cause an excessive build-up of calcium within heart cells. In normal hearts, calcium is pumped in and out of the heart each second with each wave of electricity.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007