Hi everyone! I’m enjoying my work in Seattle this week. I hope to have some foodie posts in the next couple of days (when I have time to actually go to restaurants, rather than spending all day doing site visits and board meetings). My friend Henry at Time as Wine graciously offered to write this guest post for my readers. I really enjoyed it, and I hope you do too! I added some of my favorite recipes as links in each category.
Our lifestyle is changing. We tend to eat unhealthy food, do less exercise and spend too much time in front of television. This lifestyle leads to a condition where we have more health risk than a few decades ago. One of the scariest diseases is heart disease. This disease continues to be no.1 killer of men and women. You can imagine, heart disease is responsible for 40 percent of all the deaths in the United States. No other disease can beat that statistic.
There is no magic pill that can cure heart disease. The first thing that you have to do is to control your weight and do exercise, the second is to quit smoking and the last but not least is to control what you eat. In term of food, there are some foods that can help you reducing the risk of heart attack.
Fish
The city where I live now is located near the beach, so it’s not very hard for me and my family to find fish to eat. Fortunately, fish are perfect sources of omega-3 fat. This kind of fat is very good to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. If you can find fish easily, then you should eat it at least twice a week, it’s a recommendation from the American Heart Association. Some studies have proven that this habit can reduce the risk of heart disease by 23%.
Hot Cocoa
My favorite drink every morning and evening is hot chocolate. You may think that’s what a baby do every day, drinking milk, but I won’t change it because of that. Hot cocoa is perfect to prevent heart attack, since it contains antioxidants, some studies say that it has two times more than red wine and three times more than green tea. Unfortunately, what I drink every day, hot chocolate, has too much sugar in it. The better thing to do is to use 100% cocoa and you can add a teaspoon of sugar.
Garlic
Garlic is a perfect choice for your heart. It has been proven by some studies that it has potential benefit on blood pressure if you consume it regularly. It even has a benefit to control your cholesterol level. My personal story; my cholesterol level has increased the normal standard last year, so I hope Garlic can be the solution for my cholesterol problem.
Fresh Vegetables
This is something that you have to do every day if you want to stay healthy and avoid heart disease; eat fresh vegetables. Just don’t overcook the vegetables, it will destroy the nutrients. Eat them fresh or just barely cooked. Even though I’m a green blogger, but I would recommend you to eat many colors of vegetables, since each vegetables contain many different minerals and vitamins.
How to Add More Fruits and Vegetables to Your Diet
Drinking Water
My wife always reminds me to drink more water since I work in front of the computer all the time and forget to drink. It sounds very simple, but never underestimates it. Even though you work indoor, you have to make sure that you’re not dehydrated. Lack of fluid in your body can really affect the way your heart beats and finally, it can contribute to a heart attack.
Write what you do and do what you write. That’s a message for myself. Having a healthy life is our dream, but sometimes even though you know that something has a great value to your life, you forget to maintain it. Don’t ever let your activities for the whole day make you forget doing some simple habits that can increase the quality of your life.
Had heard about the fish and the Garlic.
Good reminder to everyone to pay attention to what they eat! We all could probably eat more veggies and fruit….well, at least the more veggies and fish part resonates with me. Fruit is generally not that hard to eat. And I use plenty of garlic in cooking meals for my family. 🙂
.-= Kelly @ Hot Cookin’´s last blog ..Chicken Cacciatore Stars In Crockpot =-.