What to eat for a healthy heart

When you think of heart disease, what’s the first thing that pops into your head?

Most people instantly think of heart cancer, but heart disease covers a wide range of illnesses from heart attacks to Peripheral Arterial Disease. However, you can avoid, prevent and manage all sorts of nasty heart diseases by taking good care of your heart through your diet and physical exercise.

Beans, beans, are good for your heart, the more you eat, the more you… Well, we all know the original rhyme about beans but what about all the other great foods out there that keep our heart healthy. Here’s what you can add to your diet (along with plenty of exercise) to keep your ticker on top form.

Healthy Heart Shopping List:

• Salmon, Sardines, or Herring (Or an alternative such as walnuts & chia seeds)
• Blueberries
• Spinach
• Beetroot
• Oranges
• Avocados
• Beans & Lentils

Rich and oily foods such as salmon, that are high in Omega-3, have a blood-thinning effect and help regulate heart rhythms. If you’re a vegan or vegetarian you can replace salmon and other fish with walnuts, chia seeds or flaxseeds.

You may have noticed that inflammation has become a more common word for the inside of our bodies and how it responds to our diet. This comes into play with heart health too because inflammation in your artery walls can increase the risk of a heart attack. To prevent your artery walls from becoming a threat, try and eat foods that are high in antioxidants such as a handful of blueberries each day.

Something that is really easy to incorporate into your diet is fruit as it requires little to no preparation. Oranges contain a handful of healthy heart ingredients such as hesperidin which helps to balance your blood pressure. Equally, avocados are a great source of potassium to keep your blood pressure down and pumpkin seeds will enable your blood vessels to stay in tip-top condition.

A lot of the recommendations so far have been to balance and lower the blood pressure. However, if you’re struggling with low blood pressure or hypertension then you need to reach for the beetroot. Whether you like eating them as a snack or as part of a smoothie is entirely up to you, but beetroot expands your blood vessels and improves blood flow which will give you more energy too.

And finally, do beans really help us? Yes of course they do, that silly rhyme is actually quite accurate. Beans and lentils have loads of the good sort of fibre in them which helps your gut to bind to bad cholesterol and flush it out of your body.

None of this is rocket science, and these foods are all easy to source and buy at local supermarkets. To make things even easier you could put some spinach, blueberries, orange, apple and beetroot into a blender and start your day off with a heart-boosting smoothie! Make your diet easy for you, and you’ll find health becomes an everyday lifestyle choice.