A Healthful Diet Is Associated with Lower Risk for COPD

Smoking is the main cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but as many as one third of COPD patients have never smoked. Might other modifiable behaviors, such as diet, affect risk for COPD? To explore this issue, researchers examined the association between diet quality and risk for COPD in >120,000 health professionals (73,000 women and 47,000 men) who completed food frequency questionnaires between 1984 and 2000. Participants' diets were scored using the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010): The healthier the diet (i.e., the higher the intakes of whole grains, polyunsaturated fats, nuts, and long-chain ω-3 fats and the lower the intakes of red or processed meats, refined grains, and sugar-sweetened drinks), the …