Do Phosphate Additives Cause Hardening Of The Arteries

At least for some of us, the high-cholesterol theory of heart disease has been thoroughly discredited. The fact remains, of course, that something has to be causing the hardening of the arteries that leads to heart disease, and high on the list of probable culprits is a common chemical found in literally every kind of phosphate.

What Are Phosphates?

A phosphate is a chemical combination of phosphorus and oxygen. Every cell in every animal and every plant contains phosphates in the form of adenosine monosphate, adenosine diphosphate, and adenosine triphosphate, better known as AMP, ADP, and ATP, which almost all living organisms (with the exception of viruses) use to store energy.

It's Almost Impossible to Avoid Getting Enough Phosphate

You couldn't avoid phosphate in your diet if you wanted to. Just about the only way you can suffer a condition of low phosphate levels called hypophosphatemia is to develop a chronic metabolic condition, such as poorly controlled diabetes, an endocrine disease called hyperparathyroidism, or kidney disease, or by taking too many antacids, or through a condition called refeeding syndrome.

In refeeding syndrome, people who have eaten nothing at all for several days can suffer severe shortages of phosphate if they break their fast with a high-carbohydrate food rather than a high-protein food. Dangerously low phosphate levels can also result from severe diarrhea.

Most of the time, however, just about any diet provides the body with plenty of this mineral. Normal food intake provides about 1000 mg of phosphate every day. The bones use about 300 mg of phosphate per day, and another 300 mg of phosphate per day are lost with bowel movement and in the form of dead skin. Since the body absorbs about 60 to 70% of the phosphate in food, it is relatively rare to have a problem low phosphate levels.

Some Foods Are Particularly High in Phosphate

On the other hand, it's relatively easy to get too much phosphate. Phosphate is used as a meat preservative. Baking powder (used in making non-yeast breads and cookies) is loaded with it. Phosphates are used to keep the juices from running out of cooked meats, especially deli meats. Pudding mix, cocoa mix, and powdered fruit drinks are likewise high in phosphates, and phosphates are used as whitening and lightening agents in soft drinks (to keep brown drinks from turning black) and some, although not all, soft drinks. (There are not phosphates in club soda or mineral water.)

Generally speaking, any high-protein diet is also high in phosphate. If you add protein when you cut out carbohydrates to lose weight or to manage diabetes, especially if you like to nibble on deli meats and smoked meats, you will be getting considerably more than the 1,000 mg of phosphate per day in a standard reference diet.

What's the Problem with Too Much Phosphate?

Phosphate, it turns out, can cause a variety of problems for cardiovascular health even at levels considered "normal" in traditional blood testing, and even in people who don't have kidney disease. A series of studies have found that increasing levels of phosphate in the bloodstream causes increasing risk of:

• Calcification in coronary arteries,

• Stiffness in blood vessels,

• Carotid artery disease, and

• Left ventricular hypertrophy.

If your coronary arteries (the arteries that provide blood to your heart) are calcified and stiff, they are less able to expand when your blood pressure rises and more likely to trap a blood clot, potentially causing a heart attack. If blood vessels anywhere in your body are stiff, you are at increased risk for high blood pressure. Carotid artery disease can cause a predisposition to stroke, and left ventricular hypertrophy, usually an indicator of years of poorly controlled blood pressure, eventually causes the heart to fail to pump with as much pressure as it needs.

Researchers have found that the effects of too much phosphate in the diet are cumulative. The longer you have eaten a diet rich in high-phosphate foods (especially deli meats, organ meats, cheese, and smoked fish), the more likely you are to have cardiovascular disease. The effects of phosphate in the diet seem to be more severe in men than in women. 

Just how much difference do high phosphate levels make in your risk of developing heart disease? A study of 3,368 people (in the Framingham Offspring Study) who didn't have heart disease at the beginning of the study found that those who had the highest bloodstream levels of phosphate 16 years later had about a 55% greater risk of heart disease.

The highest levels of phosphate in people in this study were only about 25% higher than the lowest. There are many reasons people may have higher or lower levels of phosphate in their bloodstreams, especially kidney disease, but the net effect here was roughly equivalent to consuming 300 mg more phosphate per day. How would you get that much phosphate?

• Consuming 3 liters of diet soda per day (which is not uncommon).

• Eating an additional 3-1/2 oz (100 g) of deli meat or cheese per day (which is also not uncommon, due to the popularity of high-protein diets such as Atkins and South Beach).

• Eating 3 American-style biscuits (the bread, not the sweet) per day.

• Taking a nutritional supplement that contains 300 mg of calcium diphosphate (a whitening agent) every day.

Please understand that we are not telling you that nutritional supplements cause heart disease. However, we do suggest that you avoid any daily mineral supplement that is labeled as containing calcium diphosphate. Typically, these would be mineral supplements that are round, white pills.

Unless you have kidney disease, there is no reason to go on a low-phosphorus diet. Plant and animal foods provide phosphorus, but organic phosphorus is only 60 to 70% absorbed. It is the inorganic phosphate added in food processing that is the problem.

Eliminate this risk factor for cardiovascular disease by avoiding excessive consumption of highly processed meat and cheese, by limiting the consumption of soft drinks to one or two a day, and by choosing nutritional supplements carefully, reading the label for all their ingredients, not just the nutrients you need.