Healthy Heart Nutrition
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, what would it
take to avoid a heart surgeon? Would you believe a good vitamin and mineral
supplement? Combine this with an unrefined diet high in fruits 'n veggies,
some omega-3 oils and a good lifestyle - don't smoke, control weight, some
exercise and manage stress well - and you will improve your general health
and prevent or help control heart disease.
So what's a healthy diet? Science shows that it is a varied diet of relatively
unrefined foods with many fruits, veggies, brown rice and whole grains - precisely
the foods that are getting scarce in many Western diets.
To make things worse, when processing these foods, like when making noodles
or white flour from wheat or rice, we lose on average 75% -or more- of all minerals,
vitamins, fiber and antioxidant nutrients. These very micro-nutrients now turn up
as the underlying causes of slow-building diseases.
You feel fine, you have never needed a supplement, so why add a pill to your diet?
Valid question. Well, there's no longer any doubt that today's foods low in these
"minor" nutrients cause initially hidden illness -- including heart disease, cancer,
Alzheimer's, and arthritis. No surprise therefore that these are the slow-building
diseases Western medicine hasn't been able to prevent or effectively control.
While research is ongoing and not every nutrient is good for everyone, this site
is one evaluation of the evidence to date -- with a nutritional bias but ithout
vested or financial interest.
We have known for decades that few diets have optimum levels of several key nutrients
and here a well chosen multivitamin & mineral supplement is cheap (say 10 to 17¢ US
per day), and effective. Multivitamins are extremely safe and the weight of evidence
of their benefits is massive.
Even when in apparent good health, there's excellent science for taking a good
multi --plus foods and supplements so that your total daily intake is about 1 gram
of vitamin C, 1.5 g calcium, 3/4 g magnesium, 200-800 IU vitamin E and 200 mcg
selenium.
Most of the world's heart and cardiology organizations suggest reducing saturated
(solid) fat and cholesterol while increasing polyunsaturates. While less fat is
generally good, the only clear benefits of fat substitutions are those with omega-3's.
In fact the polyunsaturates without them may well be harmful (90% of what's on the
grocery shelf: corn, sunflower or cottonseed), and more so if hydrogenated (shortening,
margarine). Make sure you get some vital-for-the-heart omega-3s. Two teaspoons of flax (lin)
seed or fish oil, or 2 tablespoons canola are enough, while lower amounts are found in
unhydrogenated soy, wheat germ, walnut, chia and in some green leaf veggies.
Take care of these simple basics and according to some calculations, you'll prevent or
postpone nearly 80% of heart and other serious diseases! And for example, what could be
simpler than changing oil to canola, flax or soy, away from corn or sunflower, and to
use a few supplements.
Consider a good multi as an ounce of prevention and as an Essential Food Group. There
is no research proposing that not taking a multi makes you healthier. It also happens
to be only easy life-style change you can make. No website may make you smoke less,
walk more or revolutionize your diet. However, the ideas here are truly simple and
their potential benefits major!
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