Least Favored Veggies Are Top for Your Heart
It looks like cruciferous vegetables are good for hearth health.
This likely isn’t the first time you’ve been advised to eat your vegetables, but I’m going to add a new declaration: Eat your vegetables, especially the ones you may not particularly like.
If you’re not a vegetable eater, you technically may get your two to three servings per day by fitting in things like potatoes, carrots and corn (which isn’t actually a vegetable, by the way). But while those may be some of your most favorite veggies,1 they’re not the most nutritious options even though they do have some health benefits.
Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts (one of America’s most hated vegetables), have a lot more to offer, including protection for your heart.
In a recent study published in the British Journal of Nutrition,2 researchers looked at data from 684 older Western Australian women and found that those who ate more cruciferous vegetables had a lower risk of extensive calcium buildup in their aortas, the main artery that carries blood away from the heart.
The women in the study who ate more than 45 grams of cruciferous vegetables every day, such as a quarter cup of cooked broccoli or half a cup of raw cabbage, for example, were 46% less likely to have calcium buildup in their aortas compared to women who ate little to no cruciferous vegetables.
This is significant because calcium buildup is one of the key markers for atherosclerosis and structural blood vessel disease. When calcium builds up in the arteries, it “hardens” the arteries, hinders blood flow and reduces the amount of blood that circulates around the body. This series of physiological changes is conventionally thought to be a primary underlying cause of heart attack or stroke.3
On a side note, there are other working theories, however, that discount and refute the blocked artery notion. In his 2004 book, “The Etiopathogenesis of Coronary Heart Disease,”4 the late Dr. Giorgio Baroldi wrote that the largest study done on heart attack incidence revealed only 41% of people who have a heart attack actually have a blocked artery.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by DGUtley
