Eat your heart out of trouble

No one likes a bypass surgery. Do start eating a healthy diet from today.

Heart bypass surgery is life-changing. One positive effect is that the experience can shock a patient into important lifestyle changes. It’s difficult to summon the will power to do the right things, and deny yourself the wrong things, until your body hands you a red card.

Your heart pumps fresh blood around your body. But the heart muscle itself gets blood through the coronary arteries, which are prone to blockages caused by deposits of fatty plaque. The more the arteries are blocked, the less blood the heart muscle receives. Bypass surgery is a way to assure your heart receives the necessary supply of fresh blood.

If you haven’t made dietary changes before surgery, afterwards you will have to. Over 10 per cent of bypass patients require a second bypass a decade after their first, because the first bypass gets blocked by plaque — as the Prime Minister did recently. It is not a procedure that doctors recommend redoing, so do what you can to prevent or delay it.

The plaque that throttles your arteries forms because of an excess of saturated fats and cholesterol in the blood. So the most significant change in your diet will be to drastically curtail the dangerous fats and cholesterol-boosting elements in your diet.

Here’s what to avoid: saturated fats, especially from red meat, dairy products, chocolate, cheese. Omega-6 fatty acids in these foods prompt the liver to produce cholesterol. Also avoid trans fatty acids from hydrogenated oils. Stay away from refined sugars and processed carbohydrates too.

But do have fresh fruit and salads; fresh olive, flaxseed or rapeseed (canola) oil; cold-water fish like salmon, mackerel or tuna; peanuts, pistachios, almonds and cashews, also their omega-3 fatty acids; other foods like mangoes, pine nuts and walnuts for their healthy polyunsaturated fats; and lots of dietary fibre too. Eat whole grains and wholegrain breads.

As for nutrients, magnesium and vitamins E, B1 (helps the heart to pump) and D (which helps the body take up blood pressure-regulating calcium) are important. Avoid salt, sodium helps raise cholesterol.

Finally, aerobic exercise helps — although it won’t be enough if you don’t eat right. So eat a heart-healthy diet before you have no other choice.