How to Prevent Heart Disease

We have to say that heart disease, especially among older people, is very dangerous, but if you know how to balance what you eat and apply healthy lifestyle, the risk of heart disease will be reduced and you will have a healthier and happier life. Below are some advice for how to prevent heart disease.

What is Heart Disease?

Heart disease is a broad term used to describe a range of diseases that affect the heart, and in some cases, the blood vessels. Other diseases among heart disease include diseases of the blood vessels, such as coronary artery disease; Heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias) and heart defects at birth (congenital heart defects) ^{[1] [2]}.

The term “heart disease” is often used interchangeably with “cardiovascular disease” – a term often used to refer to the issues related to the narrowed or blocked blood vessels that can lead to heart attack, angina or stroke. Heart problems, such as infections and problems affecting the heart muscles, valves or beating are considered a form of heart disease ^{[3] [4]}.

Heart disease is the number one killer in the worldwide, including both men and women. For example, heart disease is responsible for 40 percent of all deaths in the United States, more than all forms of cancer combined. Many forms of heart disease can be prevented or treated with healthy lifestyle choices, diet and exercise ^{[5] [6]}.

What are the symptoms of Heart Disease?

Heart diseases often have symptoms such as:

• Chest pain (angina).
• Shortness of breath.
• Pain, numbness, or weakness in the leg or arm cold, if the blood vessels in these parts of the body is narrow ^[7].
• Flutter in her chest
• Fast heartbeat.
• Bradycardia
• Dizziness
• Consistent legs, abdomen, around the eyes.
• Shortness of breath while eating, which leads to weight loss ^[8].

What causes Heart Disease?

• Atherosclerosis is the most common cause of heart disease, and it is caused by diet unhealthy, lack of exercise, overweight and smoking ^[9].
• Heart defects at birth (congenital heart defects).
• People with diseases such as: Coronary artery disease, Hypertension, Diabetes, Heart valve disease ^[10].
• Smoke.
• Using too much alcohol or coffee.
• Drug abuse.
• Stress.
• The use of some medication, supplements for diet and herbs.

Fortunately, we can prevent and reverse heart disease by using natural ingredients which are always available around us. Here are top 15 tips how to prevent heart disease that you can consider applying in order to prevent any future problems for your heart as well as improve your cardiovascular health.

1. Limiting Fat and Bad Cholesterol

Setting limit of saturated fats and trans-fat is the first way to prevent and reverse heart disease. If those fats are restricted, it will help curb high blood pressure and heart disease, high blood fat caused by bad cholesterol (LDL) that accumulates in blood vessels and causes stroke, heart attacks ^{[11] [12] [13] [14]}. As recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA), you should use:

• Saturated fat: less than 7% of total calories/day ^[15]
• Trans-fat: less than 1% of total calories/day ^[16]
• Cholesterol: less than 300 mg/day for healthy people, no more than 200 mg for patients with high cholesterol or high LDL levels and who are taking medications to reduce blood cholesterol and prevent heart disease. Instead, we should use “friendly fat”; include monounsaturated fat found in olive oil, vegetable oil, unsaturated fat synthesis in some kinds of grains such as sesame, peanuts, beans… ^[17]

2. Use Low-Fat Protein

This food group includes poor meat (lean), fish, low fat dairy products, eggs … Note to choose low fat foods such as skim milk, skinless chicken, beef, lamb, fish, beans, especially soybeans. This is the food group that can provide source of low-fat protein, which is good for heart disease prevention. High protein foods should be avoided including fat milk, offal, eggs yolks, fatty meats, pork chops, bacon, breaded fried meat, offal… ^{[18] [19] [20]}

Low-fat foods, such as fish, can be used to prevent heart stroke as well. You can find more about How To Prevent Heart Stroke.

3. Fruits and Vegetables

They are the richest food sources of vitamins, minerals, low in calories, and high in fiber which is beneficial for the cardiovascular system as well as the general health of a person. You should focus on green vegetables, fresh fruits, low-salt canned fruits, canned juices. Limit your intake of pickled eggplants, salty processed vegetables, canned fruits…because high level of salt or sugar is not good for how to prevent heart disease. Fruits are also beneficial for the prevention of many other health problems, such as pancreatic cancer. You can find more about How To Prevent Pancreatic Cancer.

4. Pure Granular Foods

The advantage of this food group is that it provides fiber and nutrition that have good effects on blood pressure and heart disease prevention. The group is considered as a food group that is useful for people with cardiovascular disease. One of the top foods is flaxseed, because it has all kinds of high omega-3 fatty acids that have cholesterol-lowering effects. Heart disease patients should eat foods included: bread made from whole wheat grain (100%), cereals have a high fiber content (5g / small bowl), brown rice, whole grains , oatmeal, flaxseed … Group should be avoided includes too carefully processed white flour, thoroughly beaten rice milling process, the products made from processed grains, too closely baked omelets.

5. Reducing Salt in the Daily Diet

The advantages of eating light, salt reduction are limiting risk of high blood pressure, enhancing cardiovascular health and preventing heart disease. AHA recommends healthy adults should not eat over 2,3g salt/day (about 1 teaspoon) ^{[21] [22] [23] [24] [25]}.

6. Create Menu for Each Day

Every day you should create a specific menu. If you use a food rich in calories, protein, reduce the menu of other protein. Also, creating a various and flexible menu helps ease eating, improve taste, make food easy to digest and is also beneficial to health. This is a very powerful tip on how to prevent heart disease.

7. Avoid Excessive Abstain

The human body needs adequate supply of calories, nutrients, water to exist. Excessive abstinence may cause long-term malnutrition and rise illnesses to the body. Scientists warn people avoiding excessive abstinence, but also should not eat too much. Just enough is beneficial. Therefore, sometimes people can treat themselves with drinking a small cup of wine, a beer, having three candy chips, or some favorite foods with limited levels. This will increase euphoria, decrease appetite while you still can maintain health, prevent and reverse heart disease.

8. Aspirin

Researchers at North Carolina State University (USA) found that regular aspirin use reduces by 28% the risk of coronary heart disease in people who have never had a heart attack or a stroke of heart. To promote maximum effectiveness of the drug on blood pressure, it is advised to take a low dose at bedtime ^[26].

9. Honey

Researchers at the University of Illinois (USA) found in honey having many substances that have anti-oxidants helping prevent and reverse heart disease. The fact is that people who use honey regularly are less prone to heart disease than non-users. It is very good for how to prevent disease as well ^{[27] [28]}.

Honey can be used to help you sleep more easily. You can read more at Home Remedies for Insomnia.

10. Increase Use of Acid Folic

A study published in the British Medical Journal showed that people who have daily using an amount of folic acid as recommended, are less likely to have heart disease than people who lack this substance in the diet. The folic acid-rich foods includes broccoli, cereals… Try to consume them in order to prevent and reverse heart disease ^{[29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35]}.

11. Avoid Carbon Monoxide Gas

Most living things in the water heater, washer, and dryer … may leak a small amount of carbon monoxide in the house. A large amount of this gas can cause death to people after a few hours. Long-term exposure to small amounts can increase the risk of blood clots, leading to cardiovascular events. As a precaution, you should make the ventilation, use carbon monoxide gas detector and place it near your bedrooms. It is a very simple, but often underestimated tip on how to prevent heart disease ^{[36] [37] [38] [39]}.

12. Choose the Right Partner

The happily married people have less risk of heart disease than people who are not married. A survey at the University of Toronto (Canada) on 100 men and women with mild hypertension condition in 3 years after married showed that people who have happy marriage will have lower risk of heart disease than unmarried people. Therefore, in order not to be crushed heart literally and figuratively, you should be careful when choosing a mate.

13. Meet Friends

Not only friends, but the communication activities with many people outside are “medicines” to help you reduce stress, thus reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease compared to people who live alone or with little communication. This is the result of a study conducted at the University of Chicago. Even when you are suffering from heart disease, communication is good for how to prevent heart disease.

14. Dark Chocolate

Cocoa contains flavonoids that have good effects on blood flow without lumping. At least 1/3 of the fat in chocolate is oleic acid, which is good for heart disease prevention. A monounsaturated fat is also found in olive oil. Use dark chocolate, because it contains more flavonoids ^{[40] [41] [42]}.

15. Smile

At Harvard University, via tracking 1,300 healthy people in 10 years, scientists have found that someone who are optimism and smile regularly are having less cardiovascular problems than those who are pessimists, despondent and little-laugh ones.

Tags: how to prevent heart disease, heart disease prevention, treatment for heart disease, prevent and reverse heart disease.

To help us reach out millions of outside readers, do not forget to LIKE and SHARE if you find this article helpful!