Nutrition and Cardiometabolic Health

Nutrition plays a key role in prevention of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. Diet influences a broad spectrum of cardiometabolic risk factors, notably a cluster including excess adiposity, dyslipidemia, impaired glucose metabolism and high blood pressure. In the face of the rapidly increasing incidence of obesity and diabetes, maintaining cardiometabolic health through adoption of a healthy lifestyle is a top public health priority.

In this book, Nutrition and Cardiometabolic Health, international experts present state-of-the-art scholarly reviews of dietary and lifestyle effects on metabolic systems associated with cardiovascular health and disease. It covers a broad range of topics including biological and behavioral processes regulating food intake; lifestyle and surgical approaches to weight loss; nutritional considerations for optimal cardiometabolic health across the lifespan; the relationship of macronutrients, whole foods and dietary patterns to diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and diet as a modulator of gene expression, epigenetics and the gut microbiome and the relationship of these traits to disorders of metabolism. This book provides its readers with an authoritative view of the present state of knowledge of dietary effects on cardiometabolic health and will be of interest to nutrition and healthcare professionals alike.

Nathalie Bergeron is Professor of Biological Sciences at Touro University California College of Pharmacy, and associate staff scientist in the Atherosclerosis Research Program at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute. She was trained in dietetics and nutritional biochemistry and graduated from Laval University, Canada, with a PhD in nutrition. She pursued her postdoctoral training at the Cardiovascular Research Institute of the University of California, San Francisco, where she specialized in postprandial lipoprotein metabolism. Dr. Bergeron began her academic career as a Research Professor at Laval University in 1996. She was a visiting professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2000-2002 and joined Touro University, California College of Pharmacy, at its inception in 2005. At Touro Dr. Bergeron teaches in the areas of pathophysiology of metabolic diseases, as well as nutrition. Dr. Bergeron also holds a Staff Scientist position at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). Dr. Bergeron’s research is clinical in nature and focuses on dietary composition, with a special emphasis on carbohydrate quantity and quality, and its relationship to features of atherogenic dyslipidemia. Her more recent research activities include looking at variations of the DASH and Mediterranean dietary patterns and their relationship to cardiometabolic health. Over the course of her academic career, she has received research grants from the Medical Research Council of Canada, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the American Diabetes Association and the National Institutes of Health, along with investigator-initiated funding from the Dairy Farmers of Canada, the Dairy Research Institute and the Almond Board of California.

Patty W. Siri-Tarino is Associate Staff Scientist in the Atherosclerosis Research Program and Program Director of the Family Heart & Nutrition Center at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Biology at Tufts University, Master’s of Science in Epidemiology at the Netherlands Institute of Health Sciences and PhD in Nutrition and Metabolic Biology at Columbia University where she developed a transgenic mouse model of insulin resistance, obesity and dyslipidemia. Dr. Siri-Tarino began her post-doctoral work by developing and conducting studies in humans aimed at understanding variability in the postprandial response to high-fat meals and the role of cholesterol absorption inhibitors in its modulation. She subsequently worked on dietary intervention studies evaluating macronutrient effects on CVD risk profiles in the context of weight loss and stability as well as studies evaluating genetic effects on energy metabolism at rest and during exercise. Dr. Siri-Tarino has spoken nationally and internationally on the role of diet on lipoprotein profiles as biomarkers of cardiovascular disease and published peer-reviewed journal articles, reviews, book chapters and popular media articles on diet, lifestyle and genetic determinants of heart health. She is interested in community engagement and education.

George A. Bray, M.D., MACP, MACE is a Boyd Professor Emeritus at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. After graduating from Brown University summa cum laude in 1953, Bray entered Harvard Medical School graduating magna cum laude in 1957. His post-doctoral training included an internship at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD, a fellowship at the NIH, residence at the University of Rochester, a fellowship at the National Institute for Medical Research in London and at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston. In 1970, he became Director of the Clinical Research Center at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center, and the organizer of the First Fogarty International Center Conference on Obesity in 1973. Bray Chaired the Second International Congress on Obesity in Washington DC in 1977. In 1989 he became the first Executive Director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, a post he held until 1999. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians, Master of the American College of Endocrinology and Master of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. Bray founded the North American Association for the Study of Obesity in 1982 (now The Obesity Society), and he was the founding editor of its journal, Obesity Research, as well as co-founder of the International Journal of Obesity and the first editor of Endocrine Practice, the official journal of the American College of Endocrinologists. Dr. Bray has received many awards during his medical career including the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, Honorary Fellow of the American Dietetic Association, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Mead-Johnson Award in Nutrition, the Joseph Goldberger Award from the American Medical Association, the McCollum Award from the American Society of Clinical Nutrition, the Osborne-Mendel Award from the American Society of Nutrition, the TOPS Award, the Weight Watchers Award, the Stunkard Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Presidential Medal from The Obesity Society . During his 50 academic years Bray authored or coauthored more than 1,900 publications, ranging from peer-reviewed articles and reviews, to books, book chapters and abstracts reflected in his Hirsch (H) Index of 89. Bray has had a long interest in the history of medicine and has written articles and a book on the history of obesity.

Ronald M. Krauss, M.D., is Senior Scientist and Dorothy Jordan Endowed Chair at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and Adjunct Professor of Nutritional Sciences at UC Berkeley. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University with honors and served his internship and residency on the Harvard Medical Service of Boston City Hospital. He then joined the staff of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, first as Clinical Associate and then as Senior Investigator in the Molecular Disease Branch. Dr. Krauss is board-certified in internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolism, and is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, a Fellow of the American Society of Nutrition and the American Heart Association (AHA), and a Distinguished Fellow of the International Atherosclerosis Society. He has served on the U.S. National Cholesterol Education Program Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults, was the founding chair of the AHA Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism, and is a National Spokesperson for the AHA. Dr. Krauss has also served on both the Committee on Dietary Recommended Intakes for Macronutrients and the Committee on Biomarkers of Chronic Disease of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous awards including the AHA Scientific Councils Distinguished Achievement Award, the Centrum Center For Nutrition Science Award of the American Society for Nutrition, the Distinguished Leader in Insulin Resistance from the International Committee for Insulin Resistance, and the AHA Award of Meritorious Achievement. In addition he has been been the Robert I. Levy Lecturer of the AHA, the Edwin Bierman Lecturer for the American Diabetes Association, and the Margaret Albrink Lecturer at West Virginia University School of Medicine. Dr. Krauss is on the editorial boards of a number of journals, and has been Associate Editor of Obesity, the Journal of Lipid Research, and the Journal of Clinical Lipidology. He has published nearly 500 research articles and reviews on genetic, dietary, and drug effects on plasma lipoproteins and coronary artery disease. Among his accomplishments is the identification of atherogenic dyslipidemia, a prevalent lipoprotein trait (high triglyceride, low HDL, and increase in small, dense LDL particles) that is associated with risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In recent years Dr. Krauss’ work has focused on interactions of genes with dietary and drug treatments that affect metabolic phenotypes and cardiovascular disease risk.