Nutrition for a Healthy Heart

Having a healthy heart depends a lot on what you eat and there are many things you should avoid. But a heart-friendly diet doesn’t have to be about deprivation – you need to learn what you need to avoid and what you can use instead of that. For each of the things you can’t eat, you need to find a replacement, or you won’t be able to stick with your heart diet.

Fat

The first thing to do is avoiding saturated and trans fat and eat more omega-3 fats. Saturated fat and trans fat clog your arteries making it hard for your heart to breath, and they have also been linked to cancer, aging, obesity and diabetes.

Trans fat is found in almost every processed food, especially in cookies. Saturated fat is found only in animal products. For this reason you should eat less meat and fat dairy products. To replace these, you can use soy dairy products and instead of the meat use fish (red fish is loaded with omega-3), soy and soy products like tofu.

Other sources of omega-3, which you want to include in your diet, are nuts, dried fruits and seeds.

Sugar

Processed sugar (i.e. white sugar) can also harm your heart, because it increases your chance to have diabetes. People with diabetes have a risk of having a heart attack as great as that of a person which already had one! Instead of cookies and cake, eat fruits with fiber, like apples and pears.

Weight

Your weight is a major factor. If you are overweight you should lose weight. Aim to lose 10% of your body weight in ten months. It is not the quickest diet, but it will lower your heart risk to as much as half what it was before! On the other hand, if you lose weight too fast, two things will happen to your heart – it will have less energy and will become more likely to fail, and it will literally be eaten to give energy for the brain and the heart itself.

Salt, Wine, and Caffeine

Salt is a big no-no. Salt increases blood pressure and blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, stroke and other ischemic events, not to mention heart failure, blindness and several deleterious effects on your brain. And more than half of the people with hypertension don’t know they suffer from the condition. Better safe than sorry – cut on the salt.

Red wine may have some effect in protecting your body. However, if you drink more than 2 glasses of 200mL per day it will increase your heart risk. Some doctors believe 2 glasses of wine per day protect your heart, because in studies people who drink no wine die more of heart attacks than people who drink moderately. However, a study showed that this happens because people who don’t drink wine do so because they already have had a heart disease of some kind and thus wine does not protect at all. Your call.

Finally, caffeine is another substance prone to discussion. Some studies show a lowering in heart risk when people stop drinking caffeine, but this also happens because they did it for they already had a problem. Recently, it was shown that a moderate consumption of caffeine may actually protect against diabetes, a major heart risk factor. So, it’s your call again.