If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, what would it take to avoid a heart surgeon? Would you believe a good vitamin + mineral supplement + some omega-3 oil (canola-rapeseed, flax, fish)? Add a diet naturally high in fiber but low in processed food and hydrogenation hardened fats, and maintain a good lifestyle (in this order : 1. don't smoke, 2. control waist size, 3. manage stress well, 4. some exercise), and you will improve your general health and prevent or help heart disease.
This website looks at the food, supplement and prevention side of the picture. Nutrition in medicine is my long-term interest, not my job, so this site doesn't generate money or sell anything. Here are tips and ideas that should, with little effort, improve your health, your "distance from disease".
Science shows that a heart healthy diet is one with relatively unprocessed foods, with veggies and fruits, and with rice or grains that retain much of their original kernel-structure. Those are the foods that became scarce in Western diets. If you can't recognize part of the original food, the item is processed or refined. Some fresh eggs, liver or fish are probably also vital for most of us.
 In food processing, as when making noodles or flour, we lose 60 to 95% of most of the heart healthy nutrients. Also lost is the plant-structure and fiber that slow digestion. Industrial hydrogenation first and foremost zaps omega-3 oil, think of it as vitamin F-3, and turns it into toxic trans fat.
Why a multi-vitamin pill? Well, most quick acting single nutrient deficiency diseases pellagra, scurvy, beriberi and others were wiped out by food fortification. This leaves the long-term multiple nutrient deficiencies. Processed foods, low in many nutrients, like B6, B9 (folic acid) and B12, are firmly linked to the
, such as heart disease
Alzheimer's. Think of these first as nutrient deficiency diseases and the science suddenly makes sense! Start with cholesterol and the science will never make sense (can your doctor explain the 5th figure from the bottom?).
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