Eating Your Way Out of a Heart Attack
Your diet impacts many risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD) and heart attacks. For example, cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity -- all associated with CAD -- can be improved through dietary means. Patients at risk for heart attacks should incorporate a "cardiac diet" into their lives. What does that entail? Here, a closer look at a few foods that can improve cardiac health.
Fiber
Fiber is a major component of plants. Depending on the source, fiber can be soluble or insoluble. Soluble fiber can lower your LDL and raise your HDL cholesterol. Insoluble fiber has no effect on cholesterol but acts to promote regular bowel movements.
The connection between soluble fiber and cholesterol starts with bile -- a fluid secreted by the liver. Bile is necessary to break down the fats we eat. The liver takes cholesterol out of the blood and converts it into bile. When we eat fatty foods, bile is released into the intestines to break down the fat. Here is where it gets interesting. If your meal has soluble fiber, the fiber will help eliminate the bile (in your stool) instead of returning it to the blood. When the liver senses a low blood level of bile, it will convert more cholesterol into bile, thereby reducing the amount of cholesterol in the blood.
If there is insufficient soluble fiber in your diet, bile is returned to the liver and blood levels of cholesterol do not decrease.
Foods rich in soluble fiber include dried beans such as legumes (see below) and oat and oat bran, dried peas, nuts, barley, flax seed, fruits and vegetables.
Legumes
Legumes (dry beans, garbanzo beans, lentils) can lower your risk of heart attack. Eating 2 to 4 cups of cooked dry beans every week can protect you from heart disease.
Legumes also have plenty of folate, which can reduce the amount of homocysteine in blood. Elevated homocysteine can damage the insides of blood vessels, promote blood clots, and turn LDL ("bad") cholesterol into an even more dangerous form (oxidized). There are some studies that link elevated homocysteine levels to increased risk for heart disease. (Of note, recent studies have not shown any decrease in heart attacks with taking extra folate.)
Olive Oil
Studies have shown that olive oil can lower blood pressure, reverse abnormal cholesterol, and prevent damage to arteries. Olive oil can act as a strong antioxidant. When LDL cholesterol is oxidized, it is more likely to form a coating on the inner wall of arteries leading to plaques and possible heart attacks. Olive oil can prevent this oxidation of LDL cholesterol via vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), a powerful antioxidant. (Vitamin E supplements do not seem to have the same beneficial effects as vitamin E from food.)
Olive oil also has plenty of monounsaturated fat; the best kind of fat. Olive oil should be extra virgin, or cold press. This is the pure and more beneficial part of the oil.
Ideally you should have 2 to 3 tablespoons of extra virgin oil per day. Replace other sources of fat, such as butter and margarine, with olive oil, instead.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes contain lycopene, a substance with powerful antioxidant properties. Similar to olive oil, tomatoes can prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. By doing this, tomatoes can decrease your risk of depositing this “bad” cholesterol inside arteries (plaque formation) and future heart attacks.
Lycopene can also reduce the LDL cholesterol in your blood.
Interestingly, lycopene is better absorbed by the body from processed heated tomatoes than from fresh ones. Additionally, eating tomatoes with a fat, such as olive oil (see above) improves their absorption.
Ideally, try to consume one to two servings of red tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, or tomato juice per day.
Fish
An excellent article on the cardiac benefits of fish oil can be found here.
The above mentioned foods are by no means the only ones that are “heart healthy.” I work side-by-side with a nutritionist to educate my patients about incorporating diet into their treatment and prevention of CAD and heart attacks.
I am grateful to nutritionist Ms. Emilia Klapp, author of Your Heart Needs the Mediterranean Diet, for her contributions to this article. Her book and articles are written in clear language and are excellent reads for anyone interested in dietary means to improve cardiac health.
Sources:
Agarwal S, Rao AV. "Tomato lycopene and lod-density lipprotein oxidation: a human dietary intervention study." Lipids. 1998;33:981-984.
Bazzano L, He J, Odden L, Loria C, Suma Vupputuri S, Myers L, Whelton P. "Legume consumption and risk of coronary heart disease in US men and women." Archives of Internal Medicine. 2001;161:2573-2578.
Ramirez-Tortosa MC, Urbano G, Lopez Jurado M, Nestares T, Gomez M, Mir A, Ros E, Mataix J, Gil A. "Extra-virgin olive oil increases the resistance of LDL to oxidation more than refined olive oil in free-living men with peripheral vascular disease." Journal of Nutrition. 1999;129;2177-2183.
Rao AV. "Lycopene, tomatoes, and the prevention of coronary heart disease." Experimental Biology and Medicine. 2002;227:908-913.