[Food, inflammation and cardiovascular diseases]
Scientific evidence on diet and health is slowly becoming known. The diverse causes of many diseases in the health sciences and the different types of influences of risk or preventive factors make it difficult to reach clear conclusions. In the field of food, research is even more complex because humans are omnivorous and our diet is not always the same, as it varies with age and throughout the season. We often have to wait many years between the collection of exposure information and the onset of the disease.
In order to gather more solid information, this informative work is based on research reviews and meta-analyses. In this type of work, all articles published with established parameters and minimum quality criteria (published in indexed journals) are analyzed. In this way, non-coherent point information (which may change over time) is reduced.
In a previous article (Precoetxea, 2021), I studied the impact of fat consumption on cardiovascular diseases, trying to overcome previous assumptions, promoted by the doctors themselves and, originally, by the most prestigious researchers of the link between cardiovascular diseases and food. This article aims to bring the reader closer to the scientific evidence about the influence of food, pro- or anti-inflammatory, and its effect on cardiovascular diseases.
[Cardiovascular diseases]
Cardiovascular diseases are a heterogeneous group of problems that affect the heart and blood vessels. Among them, atherosclerosis (arteriosclerosis) is the most important. These diseases are characterized by inflammation, oxidative stress, cell proliferation, hypertrophy and abnormal remodeling of the heart or blood vessels. Atherosclerosis has serious consequences, including coronary heart disease, ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, heart failure, stroke, heart attack, peripheral arterial disease, and hypertension. Current statistics indicate that cardiovascular disease affects more than 500 million people worldwide, with 20.5 million people dying from cardiovascular disease in 2021, accounting for nearly one-third of the world’s total mortality (Jiang, 2025).
The inflammation
Inflammation is the response of the immune system to tissue damage caused by infection, injury, or irritation. It is the body’s natural reaction to protect itself and repair the damage. Inflammation indicates the body's immune response to inflammatory agents or cell injury. Chronic low-level inflammation is associated with the onset and acceleration of age-related diseases and an increased risk of various non-communicable diseases. The World Health Organization has identified non-communicable diseases as the main threats to health and sustainability. The global incidence of chronic diseases associated with inflammation, such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus and some specific cancers, will increase over the next three decades. with the aim of reducing premature mortality by 30% by 2030 through the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases, interest in the relationship between diet and diseases has increased (Reineke, 2025).
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