Make and keep your heart healthy! You whole body will be very happy and will treat you right.
You gotta have a good heart, else nothing else will work well. To keep your heart happy and healthy, you need to protect the inside lining of your arteries by eating foods great for the lining of your arteries and by avoiding foods that are believed, by medical researchers and medical practitioners who stop and even cure heart disease, to damage the arteries.
How do you keep your arteries in great shape? Based on those doctors treating and even reversing chronic diseases do the following:
AVOID foods that cause: High cholesterol–High triglycerides–High homocysteine–Insulin resistance–High blood pressure–and avoid purposefully smoking or ingesting contaminants such as drugs or tobacco.
By eating ONLY WHOLE, (not smoothies, drinks or juices of), PLANT-BASED FOODS. In particular those whole, plant foods which are high in L-Citrulline, L-Arginine, and / or high on the ORAC SCALE, (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity).
Some foods high in L-Citrulline or L-Arginine:
- Watermelon*, other melons*, cucumbers*
- Pomegranate
- Legumes, beans
- Onions, garlic*
- Beans
- Almonds*, walnuts*, peanuts*
- Brown rice
- Dark (unsweetened) chocolate/cocoa powder*
- Spinach*, Kale*
- Many spices
Some foods with high ORAC VALUE:
- KALE, Spinach, Romaine lettuce
- Almost any berry: Strawberry, Blueberry, Cranberry, etc.
- Plums, prunes, Golden RAISINS
- Cabbage
- RED KIDNEY BEANS
- Brown Rice
- SPICES–almost all spices are extremely high, so be generous when adding spices, but avoid, as much as you can, salt and sugar.
An easy way to remember all of the above: eat WHOLE, PLANT FOODS, exclusively AND avoid oils and other foods likely to cause the effects listed in the above “avoid” list.
END NOTE
* signifies foods high in L-Citrulline.
NOTE about ORAC value of foods, on the USDA website: “…a number of bioactive compounds are theorized to have a role in preventing or ameliorating various chronic diseases such as cancer, coronary vascular disease, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. However, the associated metabolic pathways are not completely understood and non-antioxidant mechanisms, still undefined, may be responsible. ORAC values are routinely misused by food and dietary supplement manufacturing companies to promote their products and by consumers to guide their food and dietary supplement choices…For these reasons the ORAC table, previously available on this, the USDA web site, has been withdrawn.”[
