Abstract P102: A Vegan Approach for Gestational Hypertension in African Americans

Abstract

The mortality rates in the African American infant population are higher than average. Non-Hispanic black infants died 11.4 to 1000 live births in 2016. The majority of complications stem from uncontrolled gestational hypertension. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the vegan diet with supplemental prenatal vitamins as a solution to a national crisis of infant mortality in the African American communities that would decrease gestational hypertension and its complications thereby improving maternal and fetal outcomes.The purpose of this paper is to introduce a research review that would strengthen the Vegan concept to prevent gestational hypertension and its complications in African Americans thus improving maternal and fetal outcomes. Perhaps the ancestors of African Americans, who originally lived in hot, arid climates wherein sodium conservation was important for survival, evolved the physiologic machinery which protected them in their original habitat but makes it difficult for them to handle the excessive sodium they ingest when they migrate. African Americans tend to have higher blood volume, lower plasma renin activity as compared to white population (Langford, 1981). If gestational hypertension is genetic to all Africa, we would expect to see poor outcomes for black women everywhere, but studies have found that foreign-born black women living in the United States have birth outcomes almost identical to white American women’s. Only descendants of the slave trade carry the hypertension gene and it has been shown to also exist in Western African countries, where Americans collected slaves. In the United States the Western diet consisting of a high content of sugars, fats and oils have pulled many triggers in our body’s responses, one of them being hypertension. Dietary fat reduction is critical in reducing insulin resistance which leads to hypertension. By educating the African American population on how a vegan diet can decrease both the maternal and neonatal mortalities, a significant improvement in mortality can be achieved.