Nutritional Tips For a Healthy Heart – The Right Diet

We need to keep a healthy heart to ensure a longer life. But how do we do that? Having a well-balanced diet will improve our health and our well-being. But what does it mean to have a balanced diet? A diet that contains high fiber and has low saturated fat is a well-balanced diet.

Fiber is very important if you want to keep a healthy heart. They help lower your cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of diabetes and certain types of cancer. Although it is based on weight, a recommended intake of fiber for good health in men would be around 25 grams a day. The best way to ensure that there is sufficient fiber in your diet is to eat a large variety of whole grains and a good mixture of fruits and vegetables that have both insoluble and soluble fiber. Soluble fiber is vital as it helps clear out bad cholesterol from your bloodstream and prolong your stomach emptying time so that sugar can be absorbed more slowly. Benefits of soluble fibers include lower cholesterol and a good regulation of blood sugar for people with diabetes. Insoluble fiber helps your body in digestion and controls your acidity in your intestines. Some benefits of insoluble fibers are regular bowel movement and the prevention of constipation. It also removes toxic waste in the colon in less time and helps prevent colon cancer by keeping an optimal pH level in the intestines to prevent microbes from producing harmful cancerous substances. Good sources of soluble fibers include oatmeal, barley, dried beans and peas while insoluble fiber is found very commonly in beets, Brussels sprouts and whole-grain bread.

Carbohydrates play a key role in our human body. Therefore, it should make up around 50 to 60 percent of your diet. You should obtain it from legumes, whole-grain breads, pastas and brown rice. Obtaining carbohydrates from these sources are excellent as they provide you with nutrients, vitamins and fiber. You should be careful to eat your carbohydrates with the right fats as carbohydrates are often vehicles for saturated fat. This is detrimental to your health as it increases your bad cholesterol.

Vitamins and minerals also aid in keeping a healthy heart. However, it is not recommended to get your vitamins from health care supplements and other products. You should rather obtain these from a well-balanced diet. Good sources of vitamins would include vegetables and fresh fruits, while minerals can be obtained in small quantities from different sources of food in your daily diet.

A healthy lifestyle has many advantages and you should strive to keep yourself healthy. In the long run, a healthy body would ensure less problems while an unhealthy one will cause you to suffer.