The Heart Truth

Reading the latest statistics on heart disease and stroke truly made me cringe the other day as according to Canada’s Heart and Stroke Foundation heart diseases and stroke take 1 in 3 Canadians before their time.

Believe it or not, cardiovascular diseases are relatively new to human history. Prior to 1910, heart attacks were a rarity. Today however, they have reached epidemic proportions. Over the years, medicine has been improving their ways it can help keep heart patients alive – provided that their first attack is not fatal. Since no one, obviously, wants their heart attack to be fatal how about looking at reducing our exposure to the factors that cause arterial damage such as loading up on daily amounts of supplementary vitamins and minerals that may have cardio protective effects? Or how about looking at making dietary changes to help reduce arterial plaque? Or better yet, how about trying both?

Let’s assume you took these new statistics to heart and you opened yourself up to making dietary changes and wanted to start adding supplements. What would it take and how would such a change look like?

According to David W. Rowland, PhD., a cardio protective diet relies on a wide variety of natural, unprocessed foods:

•          Emphasize on eating vegetables and fruits (4 cups daily). They provide a number of protective factors, including fibre, folic acid, potassium, saponins, phytosterols, vitamin C and flavonoids.
•      Emphasize on eating oats and whole grains to get adequate dietary fibre. Choose whole wheat, whole rye or whole spelt over refined fibreless grains.
•      Consume fish regularly (twice per week) and favour cold water fish such as Chinook, Norwegian salmon, mackerel, orange roughy and trout.
•      Consume fresh garlic
•      Restrict your total fat intake to 30 per cent of calories. Trim excess fat from meat and favour non-fat cooking methods such as baking and poaching.
•      Avoid cured, smoked or processed meats containing nitrates or nitrites.
•      Minimize alcohol and sugar intake
•     Emphasize monounsaturated fats, especially olive oil.

and the following daily vitamin and mineral supplements:

Vitamin C

Vitamin E

Folic Acid

Vitamin B6 and B12

Calcium

Magnesium

Potassium

Chromium

Selenium

Zinc

Many of these suggested changes seem fairly straight forward to me, don’t you think?