Heart problems are often caused by a condition called atherosclerosis. This condition happens when fat, especially the “bad” type of fat called LDL cholesterol, starts to build up inside the blood vessels.
This fat sticks to the walls of the blood vessels and forms what’s called plaques. These plaques make the blood vessels narrower, making it hard for blood to flow through.
The situation can get even worse if these plaques break apart. When that happens, they can create clots that completely stop the blood from flowing.
This can cause heart attacks if the blood can’t reach the heart, or strokes if the blood can’t reach the brain.
The Colorful Solution
Researchers have found that eating lots of yellow, orange, and green fruits and vegetables can help protect your heart. These colorful foods are full of compounds called carotenes.
Foods like carrots, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cantaloupes, bell peppers, mangoes, papayas, apricots, and pumpkins are all good sources of carotenes.
In the past, it’s been hard to tell whether carotenes can really help prevent atherosclerosis. Some studies have even suggested that taking carotene supplements might do more harm than good.
But a recent study by a team of researchers led by Gemma Chiva Blanch from IDIBAPS and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has shed some new light on this issue.
The Power of Carotenes
The researchers studied 200 people aged between 50 and 70.
They wanted to see if there was a link between the amount of carotenes in these people’s blood and the number of plaques in their carotid arteries. The carotid arteries are two large blood vessels in the neck that supply blood to the brain.
The study found that people with more carotenes in their blood had fewer plaques in their carotid arteries. This was especially true for the women in the study.
This means that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and therefore high in carotenes, could lower your risk of heart diseases.
So, eating a rainbow of colorful fruits and vegetables could be a simple and delicious way to keep your heart healthy!
If you care about heart health, please read studies about the benefits of low-dose lithium supplements, and what we know about egg intake and heart disease.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about a new way to repair human heart, and results showing drinking coffee could help reduce heart failure risk.
The study was published in Clinical Nutrition.
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