Your eating habits will determine if you are at risk of developing heart diseases or not. Coupled with a thing like an unhealthy lifestyle, poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle, what you eat affects your body more than you realize.  Lots of people have read it before and will read it again and again, but very few understand just how much damage the wrong food does to your cardiac health.

Today we’re going to talk to you about some of these food types and just how they may end up putting you at risk of a heart attack.

Which foods put you at risk of a heart attack

Processed meats

Processed meats are meat products like ham, bacon, salami, etc. The problem with such meats is that they are almost always preserved using excess salt. This extra salt, when consumed, will raise your blood pressure, which in turn will put stress on your heart. This stress can lead to either a heart attack or a stroke.

Soft drinks

When it comes to soft drinks and sodas, it is well known that they contain too much sugar. In fact, a 500 ml bottle of a soft drink can have as much as 54 grams of sugar which is 20 grams more than what an adult should be consuming in a day. Consuming that much sugar puts more calories in the body, which in turn leads to weight gain. This weight gain puts pressure on your heart and can put you at risk of a cardiac illness.

Junk food

Just food is another major contributing factor to heart problems. It is foods like pizzas, burgers, fried foods, etc. These foods lead to higher cholesterol levels in the body. Cholesterol is of two types, good cholesterol, and bad cholesterol. Junk food increases the amount of bad cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in the body. This build-up can lead to plaque formation in blood vessels like the arteries. This build-up is what eventually causes restriction of blood flow through the streets and heart attacks.

Refined foods

The term refined foods can be applied to things like white rice, bread, or pasta, to name a few. These foods suffer from the problem that, as a result of the refining process, they lose most of the useful nutrients, leaving behind only harmful ingredients like trans-fat. Such refining process may also end up adding more ingredients to the food, doing more harm than good.

General eating habits

Eating too much, too little, too often or too seldom also puts your health at risk. Eating too much will cause weight gain, and that will put pressure on the heart as it struggles to pump blood to all parts of the body. But eating too little can also leave you at risk of heart diseases. Not eating enough will cause the body to start producing more fatty acids and triglycerides. This results from the body trying to get energy from consuming itself rather than digesting food. An increase in triglycerides can lead to a hardening of the heart tissue, which, in turn, would put you at risk.

If your diet has most or all these food types in it, then you need to change your diet. An excellent place to start will be by talking to your dietician or doctor. Another good thing would be to start exercising regularly and getting regular medical check-ups. The exercise will help with the reduction of weight, and the regular check-ups will allow you to know if there is anything you need to be concerned about.

The most important thing when it comes to food and putting yourself at risk is always to consult your physician or dietitian. There are lots of diets and magic recipes out there and all claim to be right for you. But that is not always the case, and some are more harmful than good.