Our bad food choices cause more health problems than inactivity, drinking, and smoking put together. Since a healthy heart is a key to good health overall, living a heart-friendly lifestyle will keep you from getting heart diseases.
This includes eating a well-balanced diet and taking care of things outside of the body that affects the heart. Heart diseases are one of the leading causes of death around the world. Sometimes, people don’t even know they have heart problems until it’s too late. This is why it’s so important to get your heart checked regularly.
50 percent of women in India are said to have an abnormal cholesterol level. Since heart disease is becoming more common in younger people, it is important for women to know how to stay healthy. The body needs cholesterol for many things, but a bad way of life can cause the levels of cholesterol to rise, which can be bad for the heart.
A heart-healthy diet is an important part of the lifestyle changes that can help prevent or treat heart disease. In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Dr. Tilak Suvarna, Senior Interventional Cardiologist at Mumbai’s Asian Heart Institute, gave 9 eating tips for a healthy heart:
1. Eat more fruits, vegetables, and salads, which are good sources of vitamins and minerals, low in calories, and high in dietary fiber.
2. Instead of refined grains, eat more whole grains. Whole grains are a good way to get fibers and nutrients that are good for your heart. Whole-wheat flour, whole-grain bread, high-fiber cereals, brown rice, and oatmeal are all examples of whole grains.
3. Don’t eat foods that are high in cholesterol or saturated fat. Some of these are foods that are deep-fried, butter, high-fat dairy products, processed meats, and red meat. Plaque builds up in the arteries of your heart when you have high cholesterol. This is a sign that a heart attack is coming.
4. Cut down on the number of calories. Sugary foods like desserts, sweets, bakery items, sugary drinks, and processed or refined foods have more calories than you need. This can cause you to gain weight, store fat, and make your diabetes worse, all of which increase your risk of heart disease.
5. Cut down on how much salt you eat. High blood pressure is mostly caused by too much salt, which can hurt your arteries and heart.
6. Look at the labels of the foods you buy to see how many calories, sugar, salt, and fat they have.
7. Eat nuts like walnuts and almonds that are good for you.
8. Having a tablespoon of flaxseeds every day helps raise the HDL or “good”știin.
9. Watch how much you eat. It’s just as important how much you eat as what you eat. When you eat too much, you may take in more calories. Eat more of foods that are low in calories, high in fiber, and high in nutrients, and less of foods that are high in calories, high in fat, and processed.
