There’s no perfect diet, but small improvements matter. (turn)
Good nutrition is always important for health, but the risks are especially high for people with heart disease. Foods can help protect your heart or trigger heart disease.
Which eating plan you choose to prevent heart disease depends on your personal risk factors. For example, people with high blood pressure should choose a low-sodium and low-fat plan.
People with high cholesterol should consider a diet rich in olive oil, omega-3 fatty acids, and other heart-healthy fats.
If you need to lose weight, you should consider a low-calorie, heart-healthy diet. On average, reducing your diet by 500 calories per day will result in weight loss of 1 pound per week. The safest way to lose weight is to lose one pound per week. Crash dieting can be harmful and rarely results in lasting weight loss.
Diet alone is unlikely to prevent heart disease—exercise and heart disease medications are important, too—but your choices at the table can indeed determine your future.
A healthy weight is a healthy heart
One of the reasons why eating healthily is important is to maintain a normal weight.
A study of nearly 30,000 men found that overweight men (BMI 25 to 28.9) had a 72% increased risk of coronary heart disease over three years compared with men of normal weight. Overweight men had a 244% increased risk.
Another study found that following a weight loss plan (even a high-fat one) for a year could lower your LDL/HDL ratio and overall heart risk factors by a modest 10 percent.
Eat like the Greeks
Even if you don’t need to lose weight, the composition of your diet is important.
While the American Heart Association recommends getting less than 30 percent of your calories from fat, you can also strengthen your heart by following a Mediterranean diet that avoids red meat but is rich in healthy fats.
The groundbreaking Lyon Diet Heart Study found that heart attack survivors who ate a Mediterranean diet (low in red meat and dairy, but high in olive oil, nuts, fish, whole grains, fruits and vegetables) had lower risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. The risk of sudden death is as high as 70%.
A small four-year study of heart attack survivors found that the American Heart Association and Mediterranean methods were equally effective. Both diets reduced the risk of complications, including death, another heart attack, stroke or hospitalization for heart disease, by about two-thirds compared with the typical American diet.
Anyone concerned about heart health would do well to include more fruits and vegetables in their diet. The Physicians’ Health Study followed more than 15,000 men without heart disease for 12 years. People who ate at least two and a half servings of vegetables a day had about a 25 percent lower risk of heart disease than those who ate no vegetables. For each additional serving, the risk was reduced by an additional 17%.
Lowering sodium levels helps your heart
The DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Control Hypertension) is another option, especially for those with heart disease caused by or complicated by high blood pressure.
This plan, rich in fruits and vegetables but low in fat and sodium, can lower systolic blood pressure (top number) by about 12 points and diastolic blood pressure (bottom number) by about 6 points. It can lower total cholesterol levels by about 7%.
“I believe in the DASH diet,” says Thomas Lee, MD, a cardiologist at Harvard University. “Even if patients are already taking medications to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, the DASH diet or a similar diet may protect the heart and reduce the risk of heart attack.”