Heart Disease: The Heart-Healthy Lifestyle

The most important information you need to improve your health

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• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781440548093
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Diseases & Allergies

Understanding heart disease is your first step in reversing or preventing a potentially life-threatening condition. The Everything® Healthy Living Series is here to help. These concise, thoughtful guides offer the expert advice and the latest medical information you need to manage your heart disease and lead a healthy life.Inside you'll find expert advice and helpful tips on creating a healthy lifestyle. You'll learn how to eating well and exercising regularly can help you get back on track and noticeably improve your health and well-being.

Strategies for Heart-Healthy Eating

Knowing what foods are good for you is only half the story; figuring out how to eat them regularly is the challenging part. Changing your routine is never easy, but you can do it if you keep taking small, steady steps. Once you start feeling the benefits of enjoying more fresh, wholesome foods, your new habits will become self-reinforcing. Enjoy the process as you travel toward a healthier you.

Eat Healthful Plant-Based Foods

A nutritious diet is key to creating long-term health. Poor nutrition is one of the leading causes of heart disease. The old adage “You are what you eat” is actually quite true. Your body derives its nutrients, its building blocks for cellular repair and growth, and its fuel for all activities directly from the food you consume.

The connection between food and your blood-cholesterol levels is direct and powerful. Overconsumption of saturated fats, trans fats, simple sugars, and cholesterol-rich foods leads to overproduction of LDL cholesterol in the liver and the release of excess amounts of triglycerides into the bloodstream. Saturated fats and cholesterol are present only in animal foods. Trans fats are present only in processed, commercial foods.

When you alter your eating habits to include more plant-based foods and fewer animal-based and processed foods, you take a powerful step toward improving the health of your bloodstream. Studies have shown that nutritional factors alone can reduce LDL by as much as 60 percent in individuals with high levels of cholesterol. This change is far more powerful than the best prescription medications. Another significant difference is that improvements in nutrition do not have the same risk of adverse side effects as taking a long-term prescriptive drug. In fact, the main side effects of eating healthier are more energy, weight loss, a clearer mind, and more radiant skin. Lastly, eating healthier is much more affordable than medications or other more invasive treatments for heart attacks and strokes.

Numerous nutritional studies demonstrate that plant-based foods enhance your health, particularly cardiovascular health. Humans cannot exist without plant foods. While it is possible to live healthfully over a lifetime without any consumption of meat, it is not possible to survive without eating plant-based foods.

Moving Away from Meats and Animal Fats

Although researchers have determined that a varied diet of whole fresh foods is the most beneficial to health, you can still enjoy meat as part of a heart-healthy diet; you just need to use it carefully. What you need to focus on is creating dishes from lean cuts of meats and enjoying meats as more of a side dish than a main course. Purchase meats from animals fed grass diets, also called free range, rather than animal fats and animal by-products.

If you eat a typical fast-food diet, it is challenging to convert to a diet of whole fresh foods. The rest of this section will provide you with specific strategies for making this transition as smooth as possible. What you eat affects your life in a very intimate way. You need to be able to enjoy your meals and snacks and not feel deprived or punished. Take the time that you need to incorporate healthier foods that you enjoy in order to create lasting changes.

Reducing Saturated Fat in Meats

Eating saturated fats increases the amounts of harmful LDL cholesterol. At the same time, minimizing or avoiding these foods completely in your diet can help to lower harmful LDL levels and reduce your risk of heart disease.

When you prepare meats, try to do so in a manner that reduces rather than increases the amount of fat. For example, baste with wines or marinades and season with herbs; grill or broil meats instead of frying or breading; sauté or brown meats in pans sprayed with vegetable oils. If you are adding meat to other dishes, such as spaghetti, brown it first and pour off the fat before you add it to the sauce. Here are some more preparation tips to reduce saturated fats in meats:

• Trim excess fat from meats.
• Purchase lean meats. For beef, aim for 96 percent lean; for chicken, 99 percent lean.
• Avoid purchasing meats that are marbled with fat.
• Remove skin from poultry.
• Broil, grill, roast, or bake meats on racks that allow fats to drain off.
• Skim fats from tops of stews or casseroles.
• Limit or avoid organ meats, such as livers, brains, sweetbreads, and kidneys.
• Limit or avoid processed meats, such as lunchmeat, salami, bologna, pepperoni, or sausage.
• Serve smaller portions of meats.
• Try substituting lean ground turkey or chicken for beef and pork.

These preparation tips will not only reduce the harmful saturated fats in your diet, they will also lower the total fat that you consume, which will help you manage your weight successfully.

Alert

Cows are naturally grass-eating animals. Meat from grass-fed cattle has about one-half to one-third the fat as meat from grain-fed cattle. Grass-fed beef is lower in calories and higher in vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, and conjugated linoleic acid, another health-enhancing fatty acid.

Lowering Saturated Fats from Dairy Products

While dairy products are a valuable source of calcium and protein, they are not the only sources of these important nutrients. Keep in mind that eating lots of full-fat dairy products increases the levels of saturated fat in your diet, which directly increases your levels of LDL. You can still enjoy dairy foods; simply choose low-fat or nonfat versions to promote health, and choose milk from dairy cows that have been fed grass diets.

Cheese, in particular, is a very high-fat food, even higher than beef. While you may choose an occasional treat of creamy cheeses, indulging in them regularly will increase your risk of heart disease. Here are some practical tips for lowering the amount of saturated dairy fat in your diet:

• Choose ¹⁄₂ percent, 1 percent, or, ideally, nonfat milk preferably from grass-fed cows.
• Select nonfat or at least low-fat yogurt, sour cream, and cottage and cream cheese.
• Use lower fat cheeses for cooking, such as part-skim mozzarella, ricotta, or Parmesan.
• Enjoy rich, creamy, and hard cheeses on special occasions, not daily.
• Limit the use of butter, and use it sparingly.
• Check that dairy products come from cows fed grasses and grains rather than meat by-products. Look for other sources of calcium in your diet. Vegetables such as broccoli, chard, greens, and artichokes are all great sources of dietary calcium, as are calcium-fortified orange juice, some whole-grain cereals, and even vitamins. Check the labels.

Avoiding Trans Fats

Keep in mind that there is no level of consumption of trans fats that is not harmful to health. These fats increase your LDL cholesterol and decrease your HDL cholesterol levels. Trans fats are found naturally in some dairy and meat products, but most trans fats in the food supply are created artificially through a process called hydrogenation. This converts a liquid fat to a solid.

Question

Why do food manufacturers use hydrogenation?
The benefits to food manufacturers of converting vegetable oils to a solid state is that it gives form to otherwise shapeless foods for easier consumption by hand. The process preserves products and extends the shelf life, and it adds flavor.

Trans fats are abundant in processed foods such as cereals, chips, crackers, stick margarine, shortening, lard, and fried fast foods. Remember that trans fats are sometimes manufactured from vegetable oils, so simply because a food manufacturer indicates that something is prepared with vegetable oil does not mean it is trans-fat free. Also remember that a small serving of any food can contain up to 0.49 grams of trans fat while still reporting 0 grams on the food label.

When reading food labels on items, look for ingredients such as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, even if they state 0 grams of trans fat. If they are listed, try to avoid using these foods. If you must buy a product with such an ingredient, ensure that the hydrogenated ingredient appears at the end of the ingredient list, indicating that it is present in very low quantities. The goal is to live a trans fat-free life.

You can take the following positive steps to reduce the amounts you consume:

• Avoid or reduce intake of commercially prepared baked goods such as cakes and cookies, snack foods, processed foods, and fast foods.
• Select liquid vegetable oils that contain no trans fats.
• Read margarine labels carefully, and avoid those that contain hydrogenated oils.
• Avoid cooking with lard, shortening, or stick margarine; use vegetable sprays or tub margarine made without trans fats.

Reduce Intake of Dietary Cholesterol

Dietary cholesterol does not elevate blood-cholesterol levels as much as saturated fat. For most people, excess dietary cholesterol is not an issue. The largest source of dietary cholesterol in America is eggs. Studies show that in healthy individuals, consuming one egg per day did not lead to elevated cholesterol levels. If, however, you think that you may be overeating cholesterol, here are some tips on how to reduce your dietary intake:

• Eat egg whites instead of whole eggs.
• Purchase eggs from chickens raised on a vegetarian diet rather than animal fats and animal by-products.
• Read egg-carton labels and compare brands to purchase the most nutritious eggs.
• Limit intake of shellfish high in cholesterol, such as shrimp, abalone, crayfish...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Creating Your Healthy Lifestyle
• Strategies for Heart-Healthy Eating
• Successful Weight Management
• Getting Active
• Also Available
• Copyright Page