Heart Healthy Foods

Eating Healthy for your Heart Your heart is one of the most important organs in the body, and the foods you put into your mouth effect how your heart operates. If you want your heart to be strong and able to pump blood as well as possible all over your body, it is important for you to eat a healthy diet. Heart-healthy foods are readily available in the supermarket, so choose some that work for your personal likes and you should be able to help prevent heart disease in your own body.

Cholesterol is the most important thing when it comes to eating heart-healthy foods. There are both good cholesterols and bad cholesterols. Good cholesterols are called HDL, and their job in the body is to take excess bad cholesterol (LDL) to the liver, where it can be broken down and then will leave the body. LDL is actually not needed by your body at all from foods. Our bodies make enough of this kind of cholesterol on its own. It is the LDL cholesterol that hurts our hearts, not the HDL cholesterol, which actually helps our hearts be reducing the amount of LDL cholesterol in the body.

LDL stands for low-density lipoproteins. Because this substance has a low density, it does not flow through the blood stream as readily as it should. The red blood cells easily release the LDL cholesterol and it sticks to the walls of your blood vessels, especially in the arteries leading to your heart. This is bad for a number of reasons.

First, when the LDL cholesterol builds up on your arteries, it reduces the amount of blood that can fit through at a time, since the artery becomes smaller. That means your heart has to pump harder and faster in order to allow the same amount of blood to flow through your body. Over time, this makes your heart tired and not as strong. In the worst-case scenario, the blood vessel becomes so built up with LDL cholesterol that your artery could close completely. When this happens, your heart essentially panics because it is not getting the blood it needs and it starts beating rapidly to try to pump the blood. This causes a heart attack.

You can also have a heart attack from LDL cholesterol build up if a piece of the build-up, called plaque, breaks off and floats down the blood stream. When it reaches a smaller part of the blood vessel, it will get stuck and block the blood, which again causes a heart attack. If the piece of plaque travels to the brain instead of the heart, it will cause a blockage in this area of the body, which in turn causes a stroke. Therefore, it is simply important to cut out of your diet the foods high in cholesterol so that you can prevent heart disease and other problems in the body.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Terry Hopkins is an expert and has been helping people loose weight the healthy and natural way. He is an author for http://Natural Life Choices.com blog. To learn how you can loose weight and get off these fad diets once and for all check out the internet’s #1 source for Diet Solution Programs.

J. Walker’s Healthy Recommendations:

Eat fiber-rich fruits, vegetables, and whole grains daily.  Fiber reduces dietary cholesterol amounts the body absorbs.  Fiber can help lower the risk of heart attack.

Pay attention to the color of your fruit and veggies.  Eat yellow or orange fruits or vegetables and green leafy veggies every day.  They are rich in betacarotene.

Love them blackberries, blueberries, cherries, raspberries or strawberries on a regular basis.  They contain substances that slow the process of atherosclerosis and really give your cardiovascular system some time to compensate for any blockages in your blood vessels! 

Consume omega-3 fatty acids.  Flaxseed, fish, and evening primrose oils are really great sources.

Avoid saturated fats, those that are found in butter, lard and other types of solid fats.  A quote worth mentioning:

Men who eat 30 grams of saturated fat daily have twice the risk of heart attack as men who eat only 10 grams daily, in women, the risk increases by 50 percent.

Vitamin E does not reduce the risk of having a heart attack, but there are some laboratory studies with animals that suggest Vitamin E helps increase the likelihood of surviving a heart attack.  I have also read that Vitamin E also reduces the risk of heart attack in type 2 diabetics. 

So for more information on heart healthy food and healthy diets I strongly suggest you visit Diet Solution Programs and I have a surprise free Gift for everyone who visits today!  Hurry before they are all gone!