Eating Heart-Healthy for Cardio Health

Your heart is a finely tuned machine: And when you abuse it by constantly eating junk food, eventually it will turn on you. A heart-healthy diet is the right fuel for good cardiovascular health.

Your heart needs, and deserves, special treatment – and that means eating a heart-healthy diet of foods every day and exercise.

In fact, nutrition plays such a huge role in cardiovascular health that prominent dietitians and doctors alike from major universities agree that people who are at risk for heart disease should “try diet changes and exercise first, before medications.

The world today is fast pace and nutritional eating is easily aside or overlooked because people are too busy worrying about work or family or other affairs going on in everyday life.

This is probably the main reason over 100 million people, and growing, are overweight in this country today.

We get up in the morning and rush off to work not getting a good breakfast. At work we only get 30 minutes for lunch so we rush next door for fast food at Mickey D`s. And when we get home after a hard day we have supper and sit down and relax in the recliner for a few hours of big screen Hi .

It’s actually quite simple. What you eat affects your heart. When your body digests what you eat, it takes what it needs, and tries to get rid of what it doesn’t. If you eat too much junk food which is what your body doesn’t need, it stays in your body, travels through the blood, and eventually starts clogging up blood vessels which is called cholesterol deposits. “Hence the word plaque”

Plaque is a gooey substance that will stick to your artery walls. As this plaque – made up of cholesterol and other wastes – sticks to the artery walls, and restricts the orifice of the artery, slowing the flow of blood, which carries oxygen, into the heart, brain, and other vital organs. When the blood flow to the major organs is restricted is when people will start to have problems such as heart attacks and strokes.

Arteries that are clogged by plaque are prone to develop blood clots. A clot in an artery leading to your heart can cause a heart attack; if the clot blocks an artery leading to your brain, it can cause a stroke.

A heart attack can lead to permanent heart muscle damage and a stroke can lead to permanent brain cell damage. And in a lot cases both can be fatal if medical attention is not immediately available. So, to avoid this situation, you need to eat a heart-healthy diet of foods that are low in the type of cholesterol that contributes to this plaque formation in your body and exercise.

So for a healthier you fix a some wheat toast on your way out to work in the morning, at work grab a fish sandwich at Mickey D`s for lunch and after supper ride your bicycle a couple of miles or more before you sit down to watch TV.