Everyone seems to have an opinion about how to get — and keep — our hearts healthy. General Mills wants us to eat Cheerios. TikTok says we should go raw vegan. And our trainer wants us to do 10 more burpees.
The reality is it takes a host of behaviours and practices to protect our hearts from harm — and our genetics and family history play a huge role in how our tickers function, too.
But Big Cereal is onto something because diet is definitely an important factor in maintaining sound cardiac health. Eating lots of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, healthy lean protein and unsaturated fats can reduce your chances of accumulating plaque in your coronary arteries.
And, yes, plaque in your heart is as unsavoury as it sounds — and dangerous.
So, if a diverse diet full of nutrient-rich foods is what we’re aiming for, what should we stay away from?
This is what we, Noah Michelson and Raj Punjabi, hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast, asked Dr. Guilly Rebagay, a cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at New York University Langone.
Press play to hear the full episode:
Dr. Rebagay said the number one thing he’d advise his patients to avoid is anything with trans fats, adding that foods high in “very saturated fats, very oily things ― you know, like foods prepared with duck fat ― or [heavily processed] things you see on grocery store shelves” can spell trouble for our hearts.
That’s because these types of foods can contribute to the production of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, which in turn creates that artery-clogging plaque and causes trouble-making inflammation.
“Sometimes in the supermarket next to the oils, you see big cans of fat,” he noted. “They’re rendered for very delicious meals ― but I can just see the plaque growing in my heart when I see those.”
Rebagay acknowledged that most of us will occasionally treat ourselves to something with trans or saturated fats, but he advised us to follow a Mediterranean diet as often as we can.
“It’s filled with polyunsaturated fats, healthy, lean protein, predominantly from plant resources, but things like salmon and fatty fishes like that are very important,” he explained. “But the overall message is vegetables, vegetables, vegetables, and lots and lots of dietary fibre, and then supplementing that also with nuts, legumes and healthy grains. Those are the kinds of things that can help lower the LDL cholesterol.”
He also suggested trying a plant-based vegan diet.
“That has also really been shown to really help lower your sticky bad cholesterol,” he said.
Of course, changing your diet probably won’t happen overnight. That’s why the doctor recommended taking “baby steps.”
“I think it’s something that we just have to experiment with,” he said. “The joy of food is that we can experiment with things that we like, and with these diets, there’s so many options that we can have to fill our diets with. So I always try to engage my patients to find things that they like, and if you don’t like broccoli, try sweet potato. There’s so many things out there that can really help sustain us in a healthy way.”
We also chatted with Rebagay about how much we should exercise, which demographics are facing high risk for cardiac disease and the secret to longevity — according to his 85-year-old patients with incredibly healthy hearts. Listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.
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