Six Food Categories for Heart Protection
Cardiovascular diseases are the greatest threat to human health. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle can help you avoid heart disease—start with small daily habits.
Garlic: Garlic is a health-promoting food; it removes cholesterol harmful to the heart; it reduces low-density lipoprotein (LDL), a substance linked to heart disease; it also reduces platelet stickiness, prevents blood coagulation, and helps prevent thrombosis.
Eat at least 1–3 cloves of garlic daily, preferably raw or unprocessed without removing the garlic odor, which can help prevent coronary heart disease.
It's better to take garlic than ginseng—this miraculous and ancient medicinal-food treasure is known as the "guardian of health." The world’s first garlic research institute is located in Germany, whose mission is to spread knowledge about eating garlic worldwide.
Seafood: Can lower cholesterol levels, but when eating fish, limit intake of corn oil, sunflower oil, and soybean oil, as these oils may counteract the protective effects of fish on cells.
Fiber-rich foods: Fiber has the same effect as cholesterol-lowering drugs and particularly protects the heart.
Expert Tips:
How to prevent hyperlipidemia and atherosclerosis? Pay attention to the following “three more, two less” principles at your dining table.
Hypertensive patients are prone to coronary heart disease and may develop hypertensive heart disease. Long-term hypertension can lead to left ventricular hypertrophy, increasing the risk of myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death. Therefore, hypertensive patients should pay extra attention to heart protection. To achieve this, one should:
Onion: Has the ability to reduce cholesterol regardless of whether eaten raw, fried, stewed, or boiled—onion is always a friend to the heart.
Legumes: Legumes, especially soybeans, contain substantial amounts of alpha-linolenic acid, which lowers cholesterol and blood viscosity. Soak soybeans overnight, dry them, then freeze in a plastic bag for ready use in dishes like boiled beans, stir-fried beans, and bean soups. Regular consumption of bean sprouts, tofu, and other soy products helps protect the heart.
Editor’s Note: Legumes are excellent herbal medicines, such as mung beans, broad beans, red small beans, and winged bean.
Eggplant: It limits the body’s absorption of cholesterol from fatty foods and binds excess cholesterol in the intestines, helping eliminate it from the body.