In an extract from his book, ‘Keeping Your Heart Healthy’, Dr Boon Lim looks at how making changes to your diet and eating habits can make your heart healthier more generally, giving it the fuel it needs to keep it ticking for longer.
One of the three pillars of keeping your heart healthy us eating in ways that prevent inflammation in your blood vessels, support a healthy body weight, and maintain cardiovascular health. This involves learning the importance of what, when and how you wat and upending common myths about which foods are bad for your heart.
Adopting a low-GI diet may be enough to stabilize your blood-sugar levels, reduce insulin resistance, help you lose weight and improve your heart’s health. If this is not enough, I-SatPro may be right for you. Wearing a continuous, real-time blood-glucose monitoring device can help you identify your personal GI index and develop a diet of foods that you enjoy and that lead to lower increases in your blood-glucose levels.
Aim to have your meals within a 12-hour maxiumum window each day: for example, first food at 8am and no food after 8pm. Gradually reduce this window to eleven, then nine, then eight hours, if you are able to. This intermittent fasting will allow your body to spend more of its time in a low-glucose, low-insulin state, with benefits including weight loss as well as less inflammation. It can be particularly powerful tool for people with a genetic predisposition to craving sugary foods.
Avoid low-fat versions of foods, which often contain hidden carbohydrates or other ingredients that will spike your blood-sugar levels. Get protein from nuts, seeds, soy, or fish, all of which are rich in healthy fats. This combination of protein and fat protects the heart. Aim to keep portion sizes of protein to about the size of a deck of cards.
Avoid all processed and prepared foods containing ingredients that you may not be able to assess. If there are any ingredients on the label that you do not understand, throw the food in the bin (and do not buy it, going forward). Skip most condiments if you eat out – although mayonnaise is often okay.
We tend to eat more than we need because meals are a social habit – a time to enjoy the pleasure of food and drink, as well as the company of family and friends. Draw your attention to what your gut is telling you and stop eating sooner. The conversation over your meal can continue after you’ve put your utensils down.
The above extract was taken from Keeping Your Heart Healthy, written by Dr Boon Lim, Consultant Cardiologist at OneWelbeck Heart Health. You can purchase the book on Amazon. Click here to be taken through to Amazon.co.uk.
Here at OneWelbeck, we have a team of cardiology specialists, state of the art facilities and diagnostics, and highly competitive financial packages for self-funding patients as well as those with private health care.
CardiologyDr Boon Lim is a cardiologist and electrophysiologist at OneWelbeck Heart Health, where he is also a founding member and partner.
