Heart health is incredibly important, especially considering the prevalence of heart-related deaths.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), ischaemic heart disease was the leading killer worldwide in 2021, and strokes were the third-most common cause of death.
Keeping your heart is good nick is both exercise and diet-dependent. It’s recommended that you undertake 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week to help keep your heart and musculoskeletal setup strong and reliable.
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As far as diet goes, it’s important to avoid consuming high levels of saturated fat, salt, sugar, and refined carbohydrates as these can inflame and even block blood vessels over time.
But what foods should you focus on to keep your heart healthy?
There’s a particular regimen to follow that you might not have heard of before: the DASH diet. DASH stands for ‘Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension’, and it covers grub to avoid as well as foods that are particularly impactful for helping your ticker out.
The US News and World Report named it the second-best diet of 2023 behind the Mediterranean diet, so it comes with some big-name backing too.
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DASH works to maintain a healthy blood pressure whilst being flexible enough to easily adopt. Practitioners limit sugary drinks, sweets, full-fat dairy products, fatty and processed meats, high-salt foods like microwaveable meals, and saturated fats to decrease blood pressure and limit ‘bad’ cholesterol from building up.
Meanwhile, the diet includes foods with high levels of fibre, calcium, potassium, magnesium and protein to regularly flood your system with tonnes of essential nutrients.
It’s not a calorie-counting diet either, but it’s recommended that you pay attention to recommended daily servings in order to reap the benefits of the DASH diet.
According to CNET, this is a recommended breakdown of food groups for someone sticking to around 2,000 calories per day:
- “Grains: Six to eight daily servings
- Meats, poultry, fish: Six or fewer servings
- Vegetables: Four to five daily servings
- Fruit: Four to five daily servings
- Low-fat dairy: Two to three daily servings
- Fats and oils: Two to three daily servings
- Sodium: 1,500 to 2,300 mg daily
- Nuts, seeds, beans and peas: Four to five weekly servings
- Sweets: Five or fewer weekly servings.”
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Beyond the lowered blood pressure and cholesterol, other potential benefits of the DASH diet include mitigation of type 2 diabetes symptoms and severity, weight loss thanks to the restrictions on sugars, and even lower mortality rates from any cause.
Foods for thought.
Rachael Davis