For many people, going vegan is just about making major food changes and switching from an animal-based diet to a plant-based diet. While that’s completely true, veganism is actually more of a lifestyle, and it has become a way of life for so many other people.
There’s so much more to veganism than eating a bowl of salad or avoiding animal-based products. It’s about consuming all the essential nutrients in plants, it’s about following a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle, but more than that, it’s about paving the way to excellent health.
A pure plant-based diet is known to offer a plethora of health benefits such as weight loss, reduced risk of cancer, low blood pressure, and the most important of all, better heart health.
A vegan diet greatly boosts heart health and lowers the risk of heart disease. Take a look at the amazing ways through which a vegan diet helps keeps your heart in the best condition.
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Controlled Blood Pressure Levels
Eating fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based products have been shown to lower the risk of hypertension, which, in other words, is high blood pressure.
A vegan diet works really well for people who suffer from hypertension. There’s a specific kind of diet called ‘DASH- Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension,’ which focuses on reducing the sodium content in your diet. It requires you to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables to help control your blood sugar levels.
Low Cholesterol Levels
One of the main reasons why a vegan diet improves heart health is because it contains very little amounts of saturated fat. This is a type of fat that is found in animal products such as meat, butter, cheese and lamb, and contains high proportions of fatty acid molecules.
If you eat a lot of saturated fats, you run a great risk of increasing the amount of cholesterol in your blood. High cholesterol levels, in turn, make you more prone to heart diseases.
Therefore, a vegan diet keeps your cholesterol levels in check since it contains very little saturated fats.
Reduced Risk of Serious Heart Diseases
Numerous researches and studies conducted on the benefits of vegan diets have shown that eating fruits, vegetables, legumes, and beans reduces the risk of chronic heart diseases and cardiovascular diseases.
Plants are highly enriched with phytonutrients and fiber, two vital components that are essential for reducing oxidative stress as well as inflammation in the body.
Fiber is also responsible for reducing the amount of bad cholesterol in the body and prevents it from reaching your arteries by making sure that it is eliminated through the digestive tract.
Final Word
If you breakdown the different types of nutrients present in plants, you will find that it contains large amounts of potassium, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and plant sterols. All these are extremely beneficial nutrients that protect your heart by lowering the blood pressure, reducing the risk of heart disease, and preventing obesity, which is a serious risk factor for many heart diseases.
In essence, a vegan diet is your heart’s best friend and the ultimate way to keep it healthy and well-functioning!
