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How To Control Heart Disease By Healthy Dieting

By: Melissa Birckbichler

Break Studios Contributing Writer

Knowing how to control heart disease by healthy dieting is essential for living a long, quality life. Regardless if you’re trying maintain a healthy heart or changing your diet to deal with heart diseases, there are certain things you will need to know and do to keep on track to maintain a healthy heart or prevent causing more damage to your heart due to heart disease.

To control heart disease by healthy dieting, you will need to know:

  1. Knowing the basics. This is as simple as knowing what to eat and what not to eat. Cholesterol and fatty deposits are the primary issues that cause narrowing of the arteries. Knowing this should help you eliminate dietary cholesterol and saturated fats.
  2. Knowing your fats. Everyone one needs fat to properly maintain their health but knowing which fats are good and which fats are bad is the key to control heart disease by healthy dieting. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat reduce bad cholesterol. They also provide the nutrients needed for cells to function correctly. These types of fats also include Omega-6 and Omega-3, these acids have been known to benefit cardiovascular health. The fats that are considering damaging fats are saturated and trans fat. Any food sources that have saturated or trans fats should be avoided.
  3. Knowing your carbohydrates. Just like fats there are good carbohydrates and bad ones. Learning the differences of refined carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates lead to better eating choices. The object is not to eat a low carbohydrate diet but to base your carbohydrates off the glycemic index.
  4. Learn how to make healthy eating choices. You can still fill your diet with delicious foods such as whole grains, high fiber foods, lean meats, poultry and vegetables and fruits. Choosing dairy products that are either fat free or 1% dairy fats are healthy alternatives to 2% or whole dairy products.
  5. Fiber is important. Fiber lowers cholesterol levels this helps reduce the risk of heart disease and helps prevent further damaging your heart due to heart disease. There are two classifications of fiber though and the person trying to maintain a healthy heart should look into soluble fiber choices as these are the fibers that lower cholesterol. Soluble fiber binds to cholesterol making it possible to pass the cholesterol during elimination instead of having the cholesterol be reabsorbed back into the blood.

References:

Glycemic Index

Eat a Heart Healthy Diet

Posted on: Apr. 23, 2010