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Food for Your Heart

by Nancy Hearn, CNC

Your heart supplies your body with the oxygen and nutrients you need to live. In fact, it beats about 75 times a minute and 100,000 times a day. This powerful organ is a true biological miracle--yet most of us take it for granted.

I am sure you’ve heard the bad news: every 34 seconds someone dies of heart disease. The American Heart Association (AHA) reports that heart disease is currently the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States.

Six Controllable Risk Factors

According to the AHA, there are six controllable risk factors that can contribute to the development of heart disease. They are:

1.High blood cholesterol

2.High blood pressure

3.Smoking

4.Diabetes

5.Physical inactivity and obesity

6.Stress

Minimizing these risk factors is obviously important in keeping your heart healthy and strong. But let’s take it a step further.  How and when does heart disease begin?

How Heart Disease Begins

Atherosclerosis, the narrowing or blockage of the coronary arteries, is the most common cause of heart disease. Atherosclerosis develops slowly over time and symptoms usually do not appear until middle age or older. However, in recent years researchers have found that six out of ten teenagers have significant fat deposits in their arteries, which is the precursor to blockage.

Heart disease begins in childhood and is largely determined by the food we eat. As far as I am concerned, the risk factors noted above simply compound the problem over time.

In order to understand how food has such a significant impact on the heart, it’s important to understand the underlying cause of arterial blockage. It generally begins with lesions and cracks that form in the blood vessel walls near the heart.  Next, the body tries to repair itself by depositing fatty substances like cholesterol inside the blood vessels to help fill in the lesions. Over time, these fatty deposits build up, clogging blood vessels and causing a heart attack or stroke.

So what causes the lesions in the blood vessels? The heart faces many adversities such as increasing amounts of pollution, medications, environmental toxins, processed foods, and sedentary lifestyles. These factors can all contribute to creating an unhealthy cardiovascular system. From a nutritional standpoint, I believe the early onset of heart disease begins primarily with excess consumption of animal foods, processed and refined foods, as well as all forms of sugar and excess starchy carbohydrates.

The Fat Myth

Contrary to popular belief, a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet does not reduce the risk of heart disease. For decades we were told that any kind of fat is bad for the heart and that eating fat would make us fat. We listened to the “experts” and stopped eating high-fat foods like fish and nuts and loaded up on high-carbohydrate foods like pasta and cereal. Unfortunately, this dietary change has contributed to an increased rate of diabetes and heart disease, as well as to the obesity epidemic.

In addition, while we were eliminating natural fat from our diet, we were encouraged to use man-made fats like margarine and processed cooking oils, which were supposed to be heart healthy. Unfortunately, the experts were wrong.  The medical community is starting to acknowledge the importance of healthy fats found in foods such as raw nuts and seeds, avocados, fish oil, and high-quality vegetable oils.

The fact of the matter is that fat is an essential nutrient, but it is critical to know the difference between good fat and bad fat. Two of the most important fats to avoid are trans-fatty acids and hydrogenated fats, commonly found in processed and packaged foods. (For in-depth information about healthy and unhealthy fats, see Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Dr. Mary Enig, international expert on the biochemistry of food and fat.)

High Cholesterol and Heart Disease

You may be wondering how eating fat relates to cholesterol. Even though there may be some correlation between high blood cholesterol and heart disease, it might surprise you to learn that cholesterol has never been proven to cause heart disease. In fact, your body uses cholesterol to make hormones that help you deal with stress and protect against heart disease. In addition, cholesterol acts as an antioxidant, protecting us against free-radical damage that leads to arterial damage.

However, cholesterol does become a problem when it is oxidized. As Dr. Enig writes: “Heat and oxygen can damage cholesterol just as they do fats. Damaged, or ‘oxidized,’ cholesterol can injure arterial walls and lead to a pathological plaque buildup in the arteries. Both of these changes can result in heart disease.

That’s why we recommend that you avoid foods that contain damaged cholesterol, such as powdered eggs and powdered milk (which manufacturers add to reduced-fat milk, yogurt, and other dairy products to give them body—without stating this fact on the label). Ironically, when you choose reduced-fat milks in order to avoid heart disease, you consume the very form of cholesterol that can cause heart disease.”

Foods for Heart Health

Without sounding too simplistic, eating a primarily plant-based, whole-foods diet is the best way to prevent and reverse heart disease.  In addition to this simple advice, the following are some principles of traditional diets that contribute to heart health:

• Eat no more than 3 oz. daily of animal-based protein, including beef, game, poultry, dairy, eggs, and cheese
  

• Eat wild (not farm-raised) fish from unpolluted waters
  

• Use minimal amounts of traditional veegetable oils—extra-virgin olive oil, expeller-expressed sesame oil, and organic coconut oil. Avoid commercial vegetable oils like corn, safflower, soy, and sunflower
  

• Eat an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruits (preferably organic)
  

• Eat whole grains, legumes, and nuts that have been prepared by soaking or sprouting
  

• Eat natural sweeteners in moderation (such as raw honey, maple syrup, and stevia powder) and avoid refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners
  

• Take whole-food supplements daily, including a multivitamin, multimineral and broad-spectrum antioxidant.
  

• Get plenty of sleep, exercise, and natural light
  

• Think positive thoughts and
  

• Practice forgiveness.
  

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You only have one heart and so many daily food choices to keep it healthy. Will you choose oatmeal or the donut for breakfast? The salad or French fries for lunch? The nuts or potato chips for a snack? The salmon or beef steak for dinner?  Understanding the wiser food choices will go a long way in keeping your heart healthy and strong.

Sources:  Dr. Mary Enig, Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and Jack P. Strong, Gray T. Malcolm, et al., “Prevalence and extent of atherosclerosis in adolescents and young adults,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 281, 1999, pp. 727-35 .

© Copyright 2009 Nancy Hearn and Total Wellness, LLC. All Rights Reserved. www.4totalwellness.com. This content may be copied in full, with copyright, contact info, creation and information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Nancy Hearn is required.