To fight heart disease and avoid being one of the 500,000 Americans who die annually of heart attacks, people entering their 50s should be at their ideal body weight, eat a plant-based diet, and exercise for at least an hour a day.
That’s the advice from cardiologist Dr. Chauncey Crandall, a Newsmax Health contributor and editor of the Heart Health Report. And while millions of aging Americans have underlying heart disease, it’s never too late to make lifestyle changes that can reverse the damage, he says.
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Its never too late to protect your heart, says Heart Health Report Editor Dr. Chauncey Crandall. The Newsmax contributor details what steps you should take to avoid heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.
“It’s never too late to help your heart,” he says. “We now have clear, documented studies that we can actually reverse heart disease. And I’ve seen this in my practice with many patients. We bring them in, we put them on an aggressive program, and we actually see the heart disease melt away.”
Achieving ideal body weight — usually what we weighed at the time of high school graduation — is possible by eating a mainly vegetarian diet that includes fruits and vegetables, fish, poultry, little meat and oil, and avoiding processed foods and their added fat, sugar, chemicals, and preservatives, he says. Focusing on protein and natural foods, and staying away from starchy foods is key.
Combining such a diet with the cardiovascular benefits of at least an hour of exercise a day is a particularly powerful plan for avoiding the No. 1 cause of death in the United States, he says.
“These bodies were meant to be active,” he says. “Before the Industrial Revolution, which is only six generations past, these bodies were active. You were washing, you were collecting your firewood, you were pulling the water from the river. These bodies, for thousands and thousands of years, were active bodies, and each cell in the body wants to be active.”
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