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Healthy California

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Healthy California

Eating Today to Prevent Heart Disease Tomorrow

January 29, 2026 • Linda Brown, MPT • Season 2 • Episode 37

0:00 | 43:13

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In Episode 37 of Healthy California, we dive deep into one of the most urgent and preventable health issues in the United States: cardiovascular disease. With nearly one million heart-related deaths each year, we break down why heart disease remains the leading cause of death despite access to advanced healthcare, and why lifestyle choices matter more than most people realize.

This episode explains what cardiovascular disease really is, covering coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and heart failure, and explores how inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, poor diet quality, inactivity, stress, and sleep deprivation all contribute. We challenge outdated cholesterol myths and explain why triglycerides, HDL, LDL particle size, and inflammation matter far more than total cholesterol alone.

From a functional nutrition perspective, we outline practical, actionable strategies to protect your heart, including prioritizing whole foods, reducing sugar and ultra-processed foods, choosing high-quality protein and healthy fats, increasing fiber, supporting metabolic health, and moving your body consistently. We emphasize that prevention, not medication or surgery, is the most powerful tool we have.

The episode closes with encouragement rooted in faith, reminding listeners that true health begins with being in right relationship with God and making daily choices that honor both body and spirit.

Thank you for listening to Healthy California.

If you have tried all my suggestions and are still having trouble with your health, and would like an appointment with me, please email me, text, or call me via the contact information below.

My contact:

Linda Brown, MPT, Doctoral Candidate Functional Nutrition

916-426-2543

linda@heal-throughfood.com

www.heal-throughfood.com

Okay, welcome back and thank you for joining me today.

I'm Linda Brown, your functional nutritionist and physical therapist here in California.

As you know, I believe deeply in the power of food and movement to change lives.

That's what I do.

I'm a physical therapist and a functional nutritionist, so I really deeply believe in this.

Today, we are diving into a topic that affects nearly every family in America, cardiovascular disease.

According to the American Heart Association, heart deaths remain the leading cause of death in the United States.

Almost a million people in 2023.

That's 2,500 deaths A day.

And the numbers have improved slightly, but the burden remains enormous.

And this is in a country that has like the best health care, right?

Why is this number growing?

Here's the empowering part.

A large portion of cardiovascular disease is preventable.

And nutrition and lifestyle play a central role.

Things that we can change.

So today we'll explore what causes cardiovascular disease, how common it is, what the death rate looks like, how treatment works, and most importantly, how to eat to prevent it.

What is cardiovascular disease?

Well, it's an umbrella term that includes coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and heart failure.

All those fall under cardiovascular disease.

Cardio meaning heart, vasculature meaning your vessels, include the coronary heart disease, which is the vessels that feed your heart, keep your heart alive.

You know, we need vessels to keep that muscle alive.

The vessels bring blood, which bring nutrient and oxygen, so the heart needs its own blood supply.

Coronary heart disease is part of cardiovascular disease.

Stroke is part.

Hypertension is typically the vessels that are in the body, not necessarily in the heart.

And then, of course, you have heart failure.

So cardiovascular disease is an umbrella term that includes all those.

Coronary heart disease is the most common form, causing almost 350,000 U.S. deaths.

This was back in 2023, and this was a statistic by the American Heart Association or the CDC.

I think they had similar stats.

Cardiovascular disease develops when inflammation makes blood vessels more reactive.

It makes them stiff and more prone to plaque buildup.

So over time, this can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and chronic heart failure.

I said inflammation.

I think you've heard me say multiple times that inflammation is the cause of all, if not most

chronic diseases, and cardiovascular disease is one of those.

So inflammation.

Inflammation is caused by ultra-processed foods, sugar, oxidative stress, infections, environmental toxins, poor sleep, and chronic stress.

It can all cause inflammation.

And I have a podcast on inflammation, what inflammation is, if you want to go back and check out my inflammation podcast.

I go into everything that causes inflammation.

Another contributor to cardiovascular disease is metabolic dysfunction.

So elevated insulin, post-meal glucose spikes, visceral fat accumulation, fatty liver, high triglycerides, or low HDL.

We pay attention to our LDL.

LDL is our unhealthy cholesterol, but really we have to pay attention to that.

We'll talk about that a little bit later, because it's not just having high cholesterol.

We'll talk about that.

Another thing is mitochondrial dysfunction.

Mitochondria are the little organelles inside each one of our cells and they're the powerhouse of our cell.

That means that mitochondria makes energy for every cell in our body.

When that's not working properly, the whole body's not working properly.

We feel fatigued.

So mitochondrial dysfunction, nutrient deficiencies, gut dysfunction, chronic stress, which is stress that affects our HPA axis, hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis, poor sleep, environmental exposures, those are all contributors to cardiovascular disease.

So it's multifactorial and it's never just one thing.

Let's go over each one specifically, the causes of cardiovascular disease.

I'm going to read the major ones and then I'll go back through them individually.

Causes of cardiovascular disease, is poor diet quality, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and insulin resistance, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, and sleep debt and stress.

So let's go back through each one of those separately.

And let's start with the poor diet quality.

So the American Heart Association reports that diet is the lowest scoring health metric across the U.S., which means we don't have a very good diet.

Actually, we call it a sad diet. The standard American diet is a diet that is leading us down a road to disease.

And last week I did a podcast on the new food pyramid that they released in January 2026.

And it's a food pyramid that I agree with.

And maybe after this podcast, you will agree with it as well.

So poor diet quality.

Poor diet quality means that we have a high intake of ultra-processed foods, also added sugars, refined grains, and low intake of fiber.

We need healthy fats, we need quality protein, and when all those are out of balance, they contribute to vessel vulnerability, which could lead to inflammation of the vessel.

And then when the vessels get inflamed, we have plaque formation.

So inflammation is the driver of cardiovascular disease, and it's a result of poor diet.

You've heard me say before, if we're not giving our body what it needs to heal, then we're not going to heal.

So on our daily insults of things we eat going through our blood vessels, we can have a not so good diet, but as long as the body's healing our blood vessels, let's just say, then we can survive that.

But if we're not giving our body good nutrients,

There are blood vessels that's transporting all this stuff we put into it to where it needs to go.

Our blood vessels get constantly assaulted and doesn't have the ability to heal.

So that's how inflammation causes cardiovascular disease.

One of the things, poor diet quality.

The other is high blood pressure.

So nearly half of US adults have hypertension, which is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

And this is according to American Heart Association.

So someone who has hypertension, that's a risk factor.

Because if you think about the pressure of the blood hitting that vessel over and over, that heavy pressure, of course it's going to damage.

And then imagine that this blood is hitting this vessel over and over and it has the blood itself has things in it that aren't healthy.

Then you have a vulnerable vessel.

You have things in the blood that aren't healthy.

It's going to get into the vessel walls.

It's going to cause inflammation.

And then you have vulnerability in that vessel.

So high blood pressure is one of those things that is a risk factor for heart disease.

And then we have high cholesterol.

I say high cholesterol, but that is kind of an old school thinking.

So cholesterol is not the enemy.

Cholesterol is needed for hormone production, cell membranes, vitamin D synthesis, and brain function.

So we need cholesterol.

We need it so our body makes it.

So our body actually makes cholesterol.

But eating something with cholesterol isn't necessarily the problem.

It's more the LDL particle size.

So HDL is typically the healthy cholesterol and it's taking things from our tissue back to the liver.

The LDL is taking things from our liver to the tissue.

So again, cholesterol isn't the enemy, but we have to think about the LDL particle size, which your doctor can order in the labs to have the particle size broken down.

And then the oxidized LDL that gets into the vessel walls, the oxidation part of it is not good as well.

And then we also think about the triglyceride to HDL ratio.

So those are the things that are more important to look at than just having a high cholesterol number.

So let me say that again.

So cholesterol is needed, but when we talk about having poor cholesterol,

We're talking about the LDL particle size, the ratio of LDL to HDL, the oxidized LDL, and then the triglyceride to HDL ratio.

So that's the part that's damaging, not just having high cholesterol.

I don't really want you to be afraid of cholesterol.

I just want you to eat healthy.

When I talk about triglyceride to HDL ratio, how do we get high triglycerides?

We get high triglycerides by eating sugar. Eating too much sugar and refined carbs.

So it's not eating something with cholesterol that's going to give us heart disease, it's really the sugar.

So eating too much sugar, eating refined carbs, insulin resistance, excessive alcohol, being overweight or inactive, ultra-processed foods and fats.

And when I'm talking about fats, I'm talking about trans fats or industrial seed oils.

They're very, very inflammatory.

Genetics can play a role to high triglycerides.

And also having type 2 diabetes, hypothyroidism, chronic kidney disease, PCOS, and certain medications can all cause high triglycerides.

But if you think about just what I mentioned in the high triglycerides, having too much sugar, excessive alcohol, being inactive, overweight, ultra-processed foods, all that is modifiable.

You can actually make decisions to cut that out of your daily life.

So you can control that.

So that's the cholesterol part of contributing to cardiovascular disease.

Then we have diabetes and insulin resistance itself.

Elevated insulin and glucose spikes and fatty liver are conditions that damage blood vessels and increase inflammation.

So that contributes to cardiovascular disease.

Again, diabetes and insulin resistance contribute to cardiovascular disease.

You don't want the glucose spikes.

So if you have a fairly healthy diet, but every now and then you eat something that spikes your glucose, I'm not even talking about every now and then.

You know, a couple times a day, if you eat something that spikes that glucose, those spikes are damaging itself.

Stay away from the glucose spikes, that means the sugars.

And then what is another contributor to cardiovascular disease?

A cause of it, obesity. So obesity rates are high in the US and they continue to rise among the younger populations.

But obesity is not necessarily the problem, although obesity does raise inflammatory markers, so that's a problem.

But it's the process of getting there.

It's the process of getting to that obese state that is the problem.

Because it doesn't happen overnight, right?

It's a lifestyle of making decisions to lead to obesity.

Or for people who are doing everything right and they still have obesity, then there's something in the environment that needs to be changed.

When I say environment, I could be talking about toxins or toxic burden or hormonal changes, those can also lead.

But it is known that being obese causes a rise in inflammatory markers.

And as we know, inflammatory markers or inflammation is the cause of most, if not all, chronic diseases.

So again, it's the process of getting to that obese state.

The lifestyle that caused a person to become obese is the problem.

Or the lifestyle of not getting out of the obese state is the problem.

I make it sound like it's easy, and I know it's not, because some people have things that have been in the past.

I'm talking mentally that cause inflammation in the body, like trauma is what I'm talking about.

And trauma held in the body can cause obesity, even if you are eating all the perfect things in the world.

I'm trying to not make it sound like if you just eat right and exercise, then you should be thin.

That's not, I know that's not the case.

But if you have the ability to make choices that prevent obesity, then I think that we should all make those choices.

Many times changing the diet to lose weight causes people to get healthier.

And when people lose weight and get healthier, the disease goes down.

But was it getting thinner and the weight loss that caused the disease to go down?

Or was it the lifestyle change and putting healthier stuff in your body that caused that disease to go down?

Or to eliminate that disease?

Was it the weight loss?

I think it was more the the lifestyle change was the bigger contributor in that sense.

So that's how obesity can cause cardiovascular disease.

And then physical inactivity.

So according to the CDC in 2022, 22% of U.S. adults are physically inactive.

That means one in five people at least are not active.

But according to Healthy People 2030, only 25% of people are meeting the standards of activity in the US.

So again, let me say that again.

22% of people are inactive, but only 25% of people are meeting the standards of activity.

And the standards of physical activity are guidelines set by the Department of Health and Human Services and the American College of Sports Medicine and American Heart Association.

They all pretty much agree that We need a minimum of 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity aerobic activity.

So moderate intensity of aerobic activity.

And that's not just going out for a leisurely walk.

It means you have to get your heart rate up.

And you don't have to be completely out of breath.

It's not extreme activity.

It's just moderate intensity, getting that heart rate up, maybe a little sweat glow.

150 minutes a week is roughly about, what, 30 minutes, five times a week, 30 minutes a day.

That's doable. It's doable for anyone.

And I say it's doable for anyone because you can be in a wheelchair not being able to walk, but there are things you can do still to get your heart rate up.

And if you are at a loss of ideas for that, you can talk to your physical therapist.

Because the body was created to move.

We have to move.

It's what our body was meant to do.

And being inactive is just as unhealthy as eating unhealthy.

So you have to do both.

So that's how physical inactivity causes cardiovascular disease or contributes to cardiovascular disease.

And then we have smoking. Smoking cigarettes has declined, but e-cigarettes is on the rise.

So smoking not only inhibits the healing of the body, it causes inflammation and it paralyzes the cilia in our throat.

The cilia is there. They're like little hairs in our throat on the cells that move junk out of our lungs and back out into the air.

So when we cough, it's because the cilia is moving things out.

So that cilia gets paralyzed by smoking.

So it's unable to filter the bad stuff out of the air and it enters into our lungs.

So that's a reason why when people stop smoking, the cilia start waking back up

And then people get that hacker's cough. And it's because celia is waking up and they're trying to clear that stuff out of their lungs.

And eventually that goes away.

But that's the reason why people get that hacker's cough after they stop smoking.

The celia is waking up trying to clear things out.

So that is how smoking contributes to cardiovascular disease.

But then we have sleep and stress.

Chronic sleep loss and unmanaged stress elevate blood pressure and inflammation.

I did a whole podcast just on sleep and why it's so important and how it affects our body when we don't get enough of it.

So go back and listen to my podcast on sleep.

It's really important.

And then stress, same thing.

I have a podcast on stress and how it damages the body and why, we need to manage it.

It's so important to get good sleep and to control our stress because they both cause inflammation.

And if we don't sleep, we don't heal.

And when we don't sleep, our hormones get thrown off because our hormones are released at night, many of our hormones are.

And we have ebbs and flows in our hormones.

And when that gets thrown off, we don't sleep well.

We don't sleep well, we don't heal well.

We don't heal well, we also are inflamed.

So it's a big cycle when we don't have good sleep and stress is also kind of the same thing.

Stress causes inflammation for a lot of different reasons.

Try to get good quality sleep and control your stress.

And I don't want to make it sound so easy.

Just don't stress, right?

That's easy to say.

But you can listen to my podcast on stress to figure out ways to decrease your stress, therefore increasing your longevity.

So that's another cause of cardiovascular disease.

So let me go through those again.

There's eight of them.

The causes of cardiovascular disease, poor diet quality, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or it's more high triglycerides, really, diabetes and insulin resistance, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, poor sleep, and stress.

Let's talk about the prevalence and the death rates of cardiovascular disease.

And that sounds very depressing, but I'm going to go over it because it is such an impact on us.

It's kind of a big deal.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the US.

So we need to talk about it.

Everyone knows someone that has heart disease.

Chances are someone in your family has it.

Prevalence of heart disease.

Nearly half of US adults, it's 48, 49%, have some form of cardiovascular disease.

So nearly half have some form.

And remember, cardiovascular disease could be coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, or heart failure.

So nearly half have some form of cardiovascular disease.

I'm talking to you right now, me and you.

Chances are, according to these statistics, between me and you, one of us, has cardiovascular disease.

If we're talking almost 50%, me and you, one of us, likely has cardiovascular disease.

And I don't want it to be me, and I hope you don't want it to be you.

So let's make some changes.

This number is also expected to grow to 60% by 2050.

That's 25 years.

It's a growing number.

But why is it growing?

It doesn't need to grow.

We talked about the causes of it, and they're all controllable.

So let's control it.

That's why I'm talking about it.

It's so important.

All these things are controllable.

And let's see, what else?

So that's just cardiovascular disease.

Almost 50% of people have some form of cardiovascular disease.

One in 20 have coronary artery disease.

Coronary artery disease falls under that umbrella of cardiovascular disease, and one in 20 adults have coronary artery disease.

That means if there's 20 of you listening to me right now, one of us has coronary artery disease, which means the vessel feeding our heart is starting to get blocked up and blood feeding our heart nutrients and oxygen is not able to flow to the muscle.

If our heart muscle doesn't get nutrients and oxygen, it will die.

The heart muscle itself will die.

And that's what myocardial infarction or heart attack is.

If you think about a skeletal muscle, like a muscle in my arm, if we damage that muscle, it repairs itself and then we move on.

A heart muscle doesn't repair itself. So if we damage a heart muscle, it's dead.

It's A one and done type thing.

And we can damage just like little muscle fibers here and there, but we don't want a big symptom of a heart attack.

A lot of times the first symptom for many people is death, right?

We just all of a sudden feel a chest pain and then we keel over.

There's other symptoms, of course, but we just want to not get there.

We don't want our coronary arteries to get blocked up.

So again, one in 20 adults have coronary artery disease.

Almost one out of two people have cardiovascular disease.

Almost a million people a year die of cardiovascular disease.

And that's down a little bit from 2022, but stroke rates are increasing.

So it's still something.

Even though cardiovascular disease is down a tiny bit, stroke rates are increasing.

And stroke is still under the umbrella of cardiovascular disease.

And stroke is the 4th leading cause of death.

So cardiovascular disease is the leading cause, and stroke, which falls under cardiovascular disease, is the 4th leading cause of death.

And these numbers highlight both the scale and the problem and the urgency of preventing.

And we can prevent this stuff.

So that's why I'm talking about this, because this is lifestyle choices that we can make for longevity, to keep us alive a little bit longer.

And not even just alive a little bit longer, but in our last years, our last 10 years, we want those years to be good quality years.

If someone lives to be 100, you want the last few years of your life to be good years.

You don't want to live to 100 with your last 20 years being bedridden or in a wheelchair.

You want to live a good, healthy, long life.

So how do we eat to prevent cardiovascular disease?

I'm talking about food.

Right now I'm just going to talk about the nutrition part of it.

Because nutrition is something that we can control.

We can make decisions to change that.

Some of the things we can do is prioritize whole, minimally processed foods.

Whole foods, minimally processed.

So ultra-processed foods drive inflammation, weight gain, and metabolic dysfunction.

And when I say metabolic dysfunction, I'm talking about insulin resistance, insulin dysregulation.

So you want to aim for foods that look as close to their natural form as possible.

And you've heard me say this before, if God didn't make it, I'm not going to eat it.

When we buy things with a shelf life, it likely has a lot of preservatives in it.

So you want to buy whole foods, things that don't come in a package for the most part, or at least minimally processed.

When I say minimally processed, like milk, for example, milk comes in a package, it comes in a box, it comes in a bottle So it does have a little bit of a shelf life, and it does have to get from the cow to the store.

So it has a little bit of processing going on.

But the ingredients in it is just milk.

And sometimes they'll fortify it with calcium or vitamin D.

But for the most part, it is milk. That's the ingredient.

It doesn't have a long ingredient list.

If the milk you are drinking has a long ingredient list, then you shouldn't be drinking that type of milk.

That's not a whole minimally processed food.

So that's what I mean by whole food or minimally processed food.

As natural as possible.

The other thing is you want to emphasize high quality protein.

Protein supports muscle mass, metabolic health, your immune system, and your hunger.

So great options for protein are fish, especially fatty fish,

I think it's Dr. Hyman that calls it SMASH fish.

SMASH stands for salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring.

Those are fish with good omegas and good quality fats and low mercury risk.

So that's a good high quality protein.

Also, poultry. And when I talk about poultry, I'm talking about poultry that has no hormones or antibiotics.

When you buy poultry at the store, it should say no hormones or antibiotics.

Same thing with eggs. Eggs come from a chicken.

And if it comes from a chicken with hormones or antibiotics, the egg is going to get the hormones and the antibiotics.

So you want the eggs to say that as well.

If a chicken is free range, likely it's a healthier chicken that doesn't need to be pumped up with antibiotics.

If they're putting antibiotics in anything, that means that thing is probably sick or is on the road to being sick. or that they're not taking care of it and they're trying to prevent them from getting sick.

So meat without hormones or antibiotics.

Other good forms of high quality protein are legumes like lentils, beans, chickpeas.

Legumes are great in fiber and have a lot of good protein.

If you are vegan, you would want to eat your legumes with grains so that you have a complete amino acid profile.

Another high quality protein that would be good for the vegetarian, vegan, and good for everyone is tofu and tempeh.

Another good high quality protein.

And then lean meats.

And I had mentioned earlier that fat isn't necessarily bad.

Eating fat doesn't make you fat, but when it comes to meat that has a lot of fat in it, that's saturated fat typically, you want to limit your saturated fat, but also if that meat had

antibiotics or hormones, it's going to be in that fat because that's where it would be held is in that fat.

And if you're eating meat that has fat and the fat has hormones or antibiotics, you're going to take it into your body as well.

So emphasize high quality protein.

So far, what I'm mentioning is all doable stuff, right?

Whole foods, high quality protein, healthy fats.

So healthy fats.

You want to eat Good quality, healthy fats.

Our body needs fats.

And I have, again, a podcast on fats because there's different types of fats.

Healthy fats improve cholesterol profiles and reduce inflammation. So this type of fat reduces inflammation.

And I'm talking about extra virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, and fatty fish.

That's the smashed fish that I mentioned earlier.

Fats that are liquid at room temperature are the ones we want to go for healthy fats.

And I want you to limit industrial seed oils like corn, saffola, canola.

I'm not anti-seed oils, honestly, but if you think about sunflower seeds, sunflower seeds are a little bit oily.

So to get oil out of a sunflower seed doesn't take the same type of processing as oil from corn.

Like I don't know where the oil from corn comes from, but to get corn oil, if you saw what they have to do to that corn to get corn oil, it is highly processed.

I don't even know how they can say it comes from corn.

It's a highly processed oil and that's what I don't like.

I'm not anti-sunflower seed oil.

Another one is sesame seed.

Sesame seed oil typically doesn't have to be processed the same way that saffola, canola, and corn oil do.

So industrial seed oils I'm not a fan of, but if you're eating sunflower oil or sesame oil, you're eating just a little bit of it anyways.

You're not deep frying anything in it.

You're not sauteing in it typically.

Just limit your industrial seed oils.

Trans fats like margarines, limit that.

I would choose butter over margarine.

Butter is a saturated fat because it's a natural fat that's solid at room temperature.

But margarines, margarine is a trans fat and it's not good for you.

So choose butter over margarine, real butter over margarine.

And then limit your deep fried foods because they're being deep fried in a not very healthy oil and that is denaturing the food that goes into your body and your body doesn't recognize it.

might be delicious, but it's not good for your body.

Another thing you can do to eat healthy, to prevent cardiovascular disease, is increase your fiber intake.

That's kind of a big one.

We don't eat enough fiber.

Fiber lowers cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and supports gut health.

If you are still thinking fiber is just there to bulk up your stool, that's old school thinking.

That's the least of the problems.

Fiber is there to feed your gut microbiome.

That's what your gut microbiome feeds off of.

And fiber comes from fruits and vegetables.

So you want to eat fruits and vegetables.

Vegetables that are the color of the rainbow.

If I'm asking you to eat a salad a day, don't fill up a plate with greens and then not put anything colorful on it.

I'd rather you have a little bit of greens and mostly other types of vegetables.

Make that salad as colorful as you can.

If you're not a salad person, have some seasonal vegetables. In the winter time, we have our squashes.

We do have different types of lettuce that are available throughout the year.

Peas and carrots are all available at different times of the year.

So find something that you like and add it to your daily intake.

Let's see, what else is fiber?

So vegetables, fruits, beans are great when it comes to fiber and it's great for your microbiome.

Lentils, And then whole grains, let's talk about whole grains for a second when it comes to fiber.

If you like bread and you buy a whole grain bread, I'm not a fan of that, but if you have to have bread, if you remember on the food pyramid, it's very minimal.

And when you buy a bread that has whole grain, it should just be the first ingredient, hardly anything after that, and I don't want it enriched.

Enriched whole grain is processed whole grain and it's not necessarily real whole grain.

It's still processed.

On the ingredient list, it should just say whole grain and minimal ingredients after that.

And then another thing you can do is remove your added sugars and refined carbs.

Added sugar spikes your blood sugar levels.

We already know that sugar causes inflammation.

It raises your triglycerides.

It damages your blood vessels, and it promotes insulin resistance.

So remove added sugars. We don't need sugar in our diet.

We can get enough carbs through our fruits and vegetables, and whatever else we need, our body will make.

Our body makes glucose. It makes its own glucose.

If you were an ultra runner or a long distance runner or you are in sports for hours at a time, then of course, have carbs, a good quality carb.

But if you aren't an athlete, then you don't need to be eating refined carbs.

Refined carbs also meaning anything made of flour.

All the good cookies, the bagels, the English muffins, the donuts, the crackers, all that is made from refined carbs.

Get them out of your pantry and the next time you go to the store, just find an alternative.

And then you also want to eat more omegas, omega-3s.

Again, omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation, support your heart, and you can get omega-3s from your smashed fish, right, the salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring.

You can also get it from chia seeds, flax seeds, walnuts.

So nuts and seeds are going to give good omega-3s and so is fish.

So eat more fish and nuts and seeds.

And then finally, consider your meal patterns.

Not everyone needs to eat three times a day.

I actually don't think we were meant to eat three times a day.

Two big meals is fine.

When I say meal patterns, I'm talking about maybe a Mediterranean diet.

Some people are on a DASH diet, which isn't necessarily meant to be a permanent thing. whole food functional nutrition diet.

A good whole food diet is going to reduce cardiovascular disease.

And then try fasting every now and then.

Fasting is something every culture around the world does.

Every religion and every culture has a fasting built into their religion or their culture.

But don't do it without knowing what you're doing.

If you have blood sugar dysregulation, like you can't control your blood sugars, then I think it's a great idea to fast, but you need to do it in a supervised way so that someone knows and can guide you through how to get into fasting properly.

Let me go through that again.

How to eat to prevent cardiovascular disease.

I'm just going to go through it quickly.

Prioritize whole foods and minimally processed foods, emphasize high quality protein, choose healthy fats, increase fiber intake, remove added sugar and refined carbs, eat more omega-3s, and then consider your meal patterns.

If you already have cardiovascular disease, then your treatment for that would be lifestyle interventions.

So you're going to have to change your nutrition, which everything that I just talked about applies.

You're going to have to increase your physical activity.

And if you don't know how to do that or if you're in pain or if you're afraid to move because you don't know what to do, contact your physical therapist.

If you smoke, you're going to need to stop smoking.

You're going to need to reduce your stress and then increase your sleep quality.

So those are treatment options for someone who may already have cardiovascular disease or have a history.

And then a lot of times a treatment would include medications.

You're either going to be on these medications, you're headed down that road, or you already are.

So medications for cardiovascular disease might be statins, blood pressure medications, antiplatelet drugs, diabetes medications, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and you don't want to go down the road for medication.

A lot of times people that are on medications, if you are on a medication, one of these medications, chances are you are taking another medication.

Not too often does someone just take one medication.

Some of the medications need like a side medication,

And then a lot of medications have side effects where then you're taking a medication to reduce the side effect.

Let's not head down that road.

Let's try to reduce our medication or the potential of having to take another medication.

If you already have cardiovascular disease or headed down that road, chances are any sort of surgery to improve it would include an angioplasty or they're going to put a stent in one of your coronary vessels to open it up, or they're just going to pull a vein out of your leg and stick it in your heart so that you can have a different vessel that the blood can go through.

So that's a bypass.

Or you might be a candidate for a pacemaker or a defibrillator.

So let's reduce the chances of any sort of surgeries from cardiovascular disease.

But even with those treatments, the medications and the surgeries, the best treatment for cardiovascular disease by far is prevention.

That's the most powerful intervention is prevention.

So that's what I'm talking about today.

Let's put this all together.

Cardiovascular disease is common, it's deadly, and it's largely preventable.

Think about that.

If you can prevent it, why would you not?

Why is it a growing problem when it is so preventable?

And I'm not saying everything's going to be easy, but neither is being sick.

Being sick is not easy.

So this road to getting healthy is not going to be easy.

I'm not going to ever promise that to you.

But the data is clear.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the US.

Nearly half adults have some form of cardiovascular disease.

Again, if I'm talking to you, one of us has cardiovascular disease, according to the statistics.

But lifestyle, especially nutrition and movement, can dramatically reduce your risk.

So your daily choices matter.

Every meal is a chance to support your heart and your longevity.

Let me end with a scripture from the Bible.

And this one's from Proverbs 18:10.

It says, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous man runs into it and is safe.

When they say a righteous man, a righteous man isn't someone who's perfect or sinless.

A righteous man is someone who is in a right relationship with God and seeks to live according to His will.

So when you think about making choices for your life and longevity, I want you to think about being right with God first.

What is His will?

And then that might help you with your daily choices.

Because this isn't easy.

I'm saying all this stuff as if you can, I'm going to say it, you're going to do it, and then life's going to be good.

I know it's not that easy. But become right with God, and He will be your strong tower.

So I want to thank you for joining me.

Thank you for spending time with me, taking time out of your day to listen to me.

And if you found this episode helpful, share it with someone you care about, share it with someone who might be heading down that road, or share it with someone that might help you from heading down that road.

Because prevention is so powerful and knowledge is one of the best tools we have.

So until next time, take care of your heart, one meal at a time, one movement at a time, and stay healthy, California.

Thank you for joining me today.