Atherosclerosis present in ancient mummies

[adam7117]

Here's an interesting article from today's news. It turns out that ancient peoples also suffered from heart disease (atherosclerosis). The study looked at mummies from Egypt, Peru, southwest America, and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

This is from BBC News and - as always - has a couple of twists on the story. Also, do note the link to the PDF version of the Lancet article.

So if hardening arteries are not a "modern disease" as previously thought then what is the root cause? It wouldn't be the grain-based diet by any chance, would it? I love how, originally, the scientists tried to blame saturated fats for the whole thing. But now it turns out that this square peg ain't gonna fit into a round hole.

(But let's ignore all that, says BBC - you just gotta stop smoking! Sheesh.)

Heart disease present in ancient mummies
_http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21739193

Fatty arteries may not just be a curse of modern unhealthy lifestyles, say researchers who used scans to look at the heart health of mummies.

A study in The Lancet of 137 mummies up to 4,000 years old found a third had signs of atherosclerosis.

Most people associate the disease, which leads to heart attacks and strokes, with modern lifestyle factors such as smoking and obesity.

But the findings may suggest a more basic human pre-disposition.

Previous studies have uncovered atherosclerosis in a significant number of Egyptian mummies but it had been speculated that they would have come from a higher social class and may have had luxurious diets high in saturated fat.

To try and get a better picture of how prevalent the disease was in ancient populations, the researchers used CT scans to look at mummies from Egypt, Peru, southwest America, and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

They found that 47 or 34% showed signs of definite or probably atherosclerosis.

Where the mummies' arterial structure had survived, the researchers were able to attribute a definite case of atherosclerosis by looking for the tell-tale signs of vascular calcification.

In some cases, the arterial structure had not survived but the calcified deposits were still present in sites where arteries would have once been.

Age-related

As with modern populations, they found that older people seemed to be more likely to show signs of the disease.

The researchers said the results were striking because they had been able to look at the disease in people living in disparate global regions, with different lifestyles and at different times.

Study leader Professor Randall Thompson, of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, said: "The fact that we found similar levels of atherosclerosis in all of the different cultures we studied, all of whom had very different lifestyles and diets, suggests that atherosclerosis may have been far more common in the ancient world than previously thought.

"Furthermore, the mummies we studied from outside Egypt were produced naturally as a result of local climate conditions, meaning that it's reasonable to assume that these mummies represent a reasonable cross-section of the population, rather than the specially selected elite group of people who were selected for mummification in ancient Egypt."

He said it is commonly thought that if modern humans could emulate pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural lifestyles, that atherosclerosis would be avoided.

"Our findings seem to cast doubt on that assumption, and at the very least, we think they suggest that our understanding of the causes of atherosclerosis is incomplete, and that it might be somehow inherent to the process of human ageing."

(The above statement seems to be a very clever twist - I would like to know the main dietary sources of these cultures first - rather than outright discourage the readers from following "pre-agricultural" (Paleolithic) diets)

Maureen Talbot, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This small study takes us back in time to give an insight into the heart health of people in the ancient world.

"However, we simply don't know enough about the diet and lifestyle of the people studied to say whether behaviour or genetics lies at the root of the heart problems observed.

(Oh, so we don't actually know what they ate... So why assume that "pre-agricultural" diets are useless? Maybe these cultures were "post-agricultural"...)

"We can't change the past, but lifestyle choices can help to affect our future.

"By eating well, quitting smoking and keeping active, you can help to protect your heart."

(Did the Egyptians smoke anything apart from incense?)

 

[adam7117]

He said it is commonly thought that if modern humans could emulate pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural lifestyles, that atherosclerosis would be avoided.

"Our findings seem to cast doubt on that assumption, and at the very least, we think they suggest that our understanding of the causes of atherosclerosis is incomplete, and that it might be somehow inherent to the process of human ageing."

"However, we simply don't know enough about the diet and lifestyle of the people studied to say whether behaviour or genetics lies at the root of the heart problems observed."

You know, the above two tidbits really bother me - how could anybody even say that? Since when is there any confusion about the diet of the ancients? Perhaps I'm missing something here but isn't this simply muddying the waters for people at large? It's like they are spinning it to fit in with the current dietary propaganda - and blaming it on age, instead.

Just to pull on one thread - that of ancient Egyptians. I expect others to be along the same line to a varying degree... About.com seems to have a good summary but there are plenty of sources.

_http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/foodanddrink/f/111009Ancient-Egyptian-Foods.htm

Question:

What foods did the ancient Egyptians eat?

Answer:

The diet of the ancient Egyptians depended on social position and wealth. Tomb paintings, medical treatises, and archaeology reveal a variety of foods. Peasants might eat a limited diet, including the staples of bread and beer, complemented by dates, vegetables, and pickled and salted fish, but the wealthy had a large range to choose from.

Grains

Barley, spelt, or emmer wheat provided the basic material for bread, which would be leavened by sour dough or yeast, and beer.

Wine

Grapes were grown for wine.

Fruit and Vegetables

Vegetables included onions, leeks, garlic, and lettuce. Legumes included lupines, chickpeas, broad beans, and lentils. Fruit included melon, fig, date, palm coconut, apple, and pomegranate. The carob was used medicinally and, perhaps, for food.

Animals and By-Products

Domesticated animals, oxen, sheep, goats, and swine, provided dairy products, meat, and by-products, with sacrificial-animal blood used for blood sausages, and beef and pork fat used for cooking. Geese, ducks, quail, pigeons, and pelicans were available as fowl. Eggs were eaten. Goose fat was also used for cooking.

Other Dietary Items

Oil was derived from ben-nuts. There were also sesame, linseed, and castor oils. Honey was available as a sweetener, and vinegar may have been known. Seasonings included salt, juniper, aniseed, coriander, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, and poppyseed.

References

- "Bread Making and Social Interactions at the Amarna Workmen's Village, Egypt," Delwen Samuel. World Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 1, Food Technology in Its Social Context: Production, Processing and Storage (Jun., 1999), pp. 121-144.
- Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present, by Jean Louis Flandrin, Massimo Montanari, Albert Sonnenfeld. 1999.
- Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology, by Jack Goody. 1982.
- Food: Bread, Beer, and All Good Things

Bread and beer as a main staple! I mean, c'mon...

 

[adam7117]

While I'm on a roll with this very exciting (to me anyways) scientific finding, here is a slightly more reasonable spin on it from New Zealand. They still heavily lean towards the age-related causality. However, at least they have the guts to point out the shortcomings of the mainstream science.

With regards to the age claim - well, if you actually look at the Lancet article, the data is not so straightforward. Take a look at Figure 2 - Frequency of atherosclerosis by age group.

Yes, the percentage of mummies with heart disease does increase up to a point (40-49 years old) - but then it actually goes down (>50 years old). Is that weird or what. Any ideas why this could be?

Maybe the older mummies lived longer because they were wealthier and had access to more meat and fat. Which would be totally hilarious.

Mummies had clogged arteries
_http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/mummies-had-clogged-arteries-5366137?ref=rss

CT scans of 137 mummies spanning four geographies and 4,000 years of history show that hardening of the arteries was commonplace, especially in older individuals, suggesting this key sign of heart disease may be a part of aging rather than the byproduct of eating too many Big Macs.

The findings, presented on Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in San Francisco and published in the Lancet medical journal, challenge the commonly held belief that atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries - the disease that causes heart attacks and strokes - is a modern plague brought on by smoking, obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

"It looks to be the case that this is an ancient condition of human population before the modern world and may in fact have been part of our species' aging," said Caleb Finch, a professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California and a senior author of the study.

The mummies included individuals from the pre-historic cultures of ancient Peru, Native Americans living along the Colorado River, the Unangan peoples of the Aleutian Islands between Alaska and Siberia, and individuals living in ancient Egypt.

Overall, the team found signs of probable or definite atherosclerosis in 34 percent of the mummies studied.

"For mummies over age 40, half of them had some vascular calcifications," said Dr. Randall Thompson of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, who led the study.

"Considering we couldn't see all of the arteries in any mummy, that is a reasonably high prevalence," he said.

The findings are not the first evidence from mummies that atherosclerosis occurred in ancient peoples. Prior studies have shown evidence of hardened arteries in Egyptian mummies, but many believe that was due to the fact that ancient Egyptians only mummified elite members of society, who may have eaten a high-fat diet and gotten too little exercise, much like individuals in modern societies.

Wider variety of people, diets

The latest study, however, spans a much broader swath of society, looking at individuals from different regions and societies and with very different diets.

"What we've put together in this is four cultures with very disparate lifestyles and geography. We have a more-convincing argument about the presence of this disease in ancient people," Thompson said.

Finch said until the 20th century, infection was one of the biggest threats to human health. But advances in antibiotics and hygiene have expanded life spans long enough to expose the next big killer: age-related heart disease.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States for both men and women, killing about 600,000 people each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Finch said drugs that lower cholesterol, reduce blood pressure and thin the blood have been "a tremendous success story in 20th and 21st century medicine," allowing millions of people to survive heart disease and live longer lives.

Even so, about one third of heart attacks arise in people who have no risk factors for heart disease except for their advancing age, he said.

"The question is, what can we possibly do to slow down the underlying basic process of atherosclerosis and aging in our blood vessels," he said. "That, right now, is a blank wall."