Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease Naturally
An anti-inflammatory diet is the key to lowering your risk of heart disease naturally, and this means, eating as far as possible, natural foods and avoiding processed, manufactured, and junk foods. Our modern diet is less healthy in many ways than that of our ancient ancestors. Our modern diet, for example, contains in general, way too much refined vegetable oil, and we should try to avoid this.
Refined vegetable oils encourage atherosclerosis and hence heart disease, as does trans-fat, which is used by food manufacturers in so many convenience and packaged foods. Saturated fats in meats, dairy products, and eggs, can contain arachidonic acid which is essential in small amounts, but may provoke inflammation in excess so it's all about balance.
High sugar diets are also associated with inflammation, obesity, and diabetes. All directly linked to increased cardiovascular risk.
The basic principles of an anti-inflammatory diet are:
To eat mainly fresh, natural food and minimise consumption of processed, manufactured, and convenience foods.
To eat plenty of fresh vegetables, including some vegetables like carrots eaten raw and some fruit.
To aim for a variety of different foodstuffs.
There are however, foods that are positively anti-inflammatory and beneficial to health, as follows:
Vegetables - especially dark green, leafy vegetables, are rich in phytochemicals and antioxidants that fight inflammation. Brightly coloured vegetables contain valuable flavonoids.
Fruits - contain many important anti-inflammatory compounds such as quercetin, found in apples and red onions, plus a range of anti-oxidants. Many berries like strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, are especially rich in anti-oxidants.
If you’d like to learn how to improve heart health and lower your cholesterol levels naturally through simple dietary and lifestyle changes then book in for a Healthy Heart Strategy Session.