Nearly a third of all fatalities worldwide are caused by heart disease.
Food significantly impacts heart health and can lower your chance of developing heart disease. Several characteristics associated with heart disease can be affected by the foods you eat, including blood pressure, triglycerides, inflammation and cholesterol.
Here are ways in which a healthy diet can improve your heart health [1]:
1. Helps manage cholesterol levels
Some foods can increase bad cholesterol, while others can reduce it. Several metabolic processes require cholesterol, a lipid in the body’s cell membranes.
A person’s body makes it from food ingested and created in the liver. HDL or ‘good’ cholesterol works to remove cholesterol from the body and makes it more difficult for plaque to gather in the arteries, whereas LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol causes plaque to form.
2. Delivers beneficial fats
Lower your risk of heart disease by replacing saturated and trans dietary fats with unsaturated (‘good fats’). Replace butter with oils from seeds or plants such as olive, avocado, sunflower, canola, safflower, peanuts, soybean and sesame. Unsalted nuts, seeds, avocados and different types of seeds like chia, tahini and linseed are additional sources of unsaturated fats.
3. Provides vital nutrients
Fruits and vegetables contain fiber, potassium and other micronutrients (like antioxidants) that help prevent heart disease. In addition, they provide significant amounts of folate, that may reduce blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine, which may increase heart disease risk.
Eat legumes, nuts and seeds to reduce your cardiovascular disease risk. These are beautiful sources of plant proteins, fiber, beneficial fats and minerals.
4. Specifically helps regulate glycemic levels
Besides lowering blood triglycerides and glucose (sugar) levels, unrefined carbohydrate sources that have a low glycemic load, such as wholegrain bread and cereals, legumes, rice and pasta varieties, and fruits and vegetables, they also help manage diabetes and reduce heart disease risk.
Wholegrain cereals have been shown to lower LDL cholesterol and heart disease risk. Oats, lentils and barley are a few types of foods abundant in soluble fiber that are excellent for decreasing total cholesterol levels.
5. Protects with antioxidants
The antioxidant activity of vitamin E plays an important role in reducing LDL cholesterol, according to some research. Vitamin E can be found in avocados, leafy green vegetables, vegetable oils and wholegrain products. You can eat vitamin E-rich foods rather than taking pills, which haven’t been proven to be as adequate.
Tea’s antioxidants may help prevent fatty deposits in arteries, according to some studies. Moreover, they may enhance blood vessel dilatation in order to improve blood flow and prevent blood clots.
To ensure that your heart receives the benefits of eating healthy foods, incorporate them into your diet.
