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Avoid Stroke and Heart
Attack - How Paleo Cause Stroke and Heart Attack
Diets
seem to come and go all the time, but the paleo diet has been going from strength to
strength.
Have
you felt tempted to try it?
If
you’ve adopted “the caveman diet” for heart health reasons, then a new study in
the European Journal of Nutrition might come as a shock to you.
For
those who don’t know, the paleo diet promotes foods that hunter-gatherers would
have eaten more than 10,000 years ago (in the Paleolithic era—hence the name)
things like fish, lean meats, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds. It forbids foods
like dairy products, grains, legumes, potatoes, added sugar, salt, and
processed foods.
The
new study—carried out by researchers from Edith Cowan University in Western
Australia—investigated the effect of the paleo diet on gut health, since previous studies
contradicted each other on this issue.
They
recruited 47 people who had eaten a relatively healthy diet for the previous 12
months, together with 44 people who had eaten a paleo diet for at least the
previous 12 months.
The
paleo group was divided into a strict paleolithic group that consumed less than
one serving of grains and dairy per day and a pseudo-paleolithic group that
consumed more than one serving of these food groups per day.
Unsurprisingly,
they found that the paleo groups were eating more fat than the other groups and
that the strict paleo group consumed the most protein. They also discovered that the
paleo dieters were not short of fiber, as one may have expected, given the lack
of grains and legumes on their plate.
Still,
that wasn’t enough to save the paleo crowd, as their blood, urine, and stool
samples revealed a few unsavory truths.
Firstly,
they had much more trimethylamine-n-oxide (TMAO) in their blood than the other
subjects. TMAO is a compound that’s produced in our intestines, and too much of
it spells bad news.
Almost
all the research up to now says that it’s a major heart disease risk.
The
TMAO levels were highest in the strict paleo group, the people that consumed
almost no grains at all, so their heart disease risk goes way up.
Avoid Stroke and Heart
Attack - The Tasty Treat
that Cuts Blood Pressure and Cholesterol
Bad
food tastes good. That’s part of the reason why it can be so difficult to beat
conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. It’s unfortunate that
your cardiovascular health is not best friends
with many of the sweet things in this world.
But
if you do have a sweet tooth then we have some good news for you, because there
is one fabulous feel good food that tastes great and can still help your
health.
It
can help make your heart healthier, reduce your blood pressure, cut your bad cholesterol, ramp up your
brain activity and even pep up your love life.
Well,
it shouldn’t be too surprising that chocolate is healthy given that it starts
life as cocoa beans, which are loaded with flavanol. Flavanol is an antioxidant, one of those Swiss army knives
of health that stops blood clots, boosts blood flow to the
heart and brain, reduces high blood pressure, and lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke.
But
it’s not the only antioxidant that cocoa beans are choc full of. There are even
more of these helpful substances which are so beneficial to vascular health,
and which also take the fight to free radicals—the harmful molecules which
contribute to oxidation in the body.
Increased
oxidation opens the way for LDL cholesterol—the bad sort—to start
forming plaque on the arterial walls. As a result,
they become narrower and more rigid, which is a perfect recipe for heart attack and stroke.
There
are many things in the environment that can cause damage to the body, like
pollution, cigarette smoke, and even too much sunlight, and antioxidants help
to mop up the effects of all of them, before they can do their damage.
But
it isn’t just the free radicals that help put chocolate on a par with health
foods. There’s also the fat content. The majority of fat in chocolate comes
from cocoa butter, which contains oleic, palmitic and stearic fatty acids (and
you’ll find Oleic acid in olive oil too). It’s monounsaturated, which means it
is heart-healthy and a proven blood pressure reducer.
The
palmitic and stearic fatty acids are saturated fats, but still, research has
found that they don’t hurt your cholesterol levels, which is odd but
welcome news!
It’s
now well established that chocolate can lower stress levels and improve a person’s
sense of well-being and happiness. This is probably down to the fact that it’s
great at boosting the production of endorphins, the brain’s natural happiness
chemicals. And you also get serotonin in the mix, the body’s own antidepressant, too.
It’s
worth mentioning that the brain releases these happiness chemicals when we’re
in love, so when people say that they love chocolate, they really do mean it.
The
only fly in the ointment with chocolate is the high sugar content. That’s why
we’d recommend dark chocolate over milk chocolate every time. Choose the dark
stuff with at least 65% cocoa content. Current research leads us to believe
that 3 ounces (85 grams) of chocolate a day will give you all of the health
benefits without the sugar rush.
Watch
this video, to avoid stroke and heart attack - Strategies to Prevent Heart Attack and Stroke in the Workplace
As good as chocolate is for you, it can’t handle the job of
lowering your blood pressure all on its own. For that you’re going to need something else, and these 3 simple exercises are the answer to lowering your blood pressure down to 120/80 right away…
Avoid Stroke and Heart
Attack - Shingles Increases
Your Risk of These Two Deadly Conditions
A
recently published study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology
shows that people at risk of shingles are also at risk of heart attacks and strokes because
of the virus that causes shingles.
Shingles
comes from the Herpes Zoster virus. It first causes chickenpox, usually in
childhood, then it bides its time, lying dormant in your body until it shows up
as shingles when you’re older.
But
how does it cause stroke and heart attack?
The
authors of the new study used medical data relating to South Koreans. This gave
researchers extensive demographic and medical information for 570,000 people.
519,880
of them were observed between 2003 and 2013 and in that time 23,233 were
diagnosed with the Herpes Zoster virus, primarily because they developed
shingles.
The
scientists created a comparison group with selections based on demographic and
medical information.
The
shingles group suffered 1.34 more strokes per 1,000 person-years than the
non-shingles group did. They also suffered 0.8 heart attacks more per 1,000 person-years
than the non-shingles group did.
The
risk was highest for people under 40 and for those who had had shingles in the
past year.
The
fact that the youngest people with few cardiovascular disease risk factors
experienced the highest risk was surprising, as we would usually expect older
people with clogged arteries and higher blood pressure to experience strokes and heart attacks.
The
authors looked at previously published studies to help them suggest why
shingles might increase the risk of cardiovascular problems.
When
active, the Herpes Zoster virus can replicate right next to arteries. This
causes inflammation in those arteries which, in
turn, can cause them to block or burst.
Even
when dormant, the virus is constantly reactivated at a level that causes no
symptoms. When this occurs next to arteries, the same thing happens.
The
virus tends to move through your nervous system to the center of your body,
where you have the largest arteries.
The
virus increases both your blood pressure and negative emotions.
The
virus compromises your immune system, which then puts you at risk of medical
problems, including cardiovascular ones.
This
all points to why we should live healthy lifestyles. Being healthy is the best
way to be ensure that your immune system is strong enough to resist the
shingles virus. It tends to attack people who are older with weaker immune
systems, so the healthier and stronger we can keep ourselves, the better we can
resist it.
Watch
this video, to avoid stroke and heart attack - Does aspirin help prevent stroke and heart attacks? - Mayo Clinic Radio
If you have high cholesterol, learn how to eliminate it by cutting out the one ingredient explained here (maybe it helps with shingles too)…
This post is from the
Oxidized Cholesterol Strategy Program. It was created by Scott Davis. Because
he once suffered from high cholesterol, so much so that he even had a severe
heart attack. This is what essentially led him to finding healthier
alternatives to conventional medication. Oxidized Cholesterol Strategy is a
unique online program that provides you with all the information you need to
regain control of your cholesterol levels and health, as a whole.
