Every third Russian dies from cardiovascular diseases, primarily from coronary heart disease. The reason for these ailments lies in the high level of cholesterol in the blood. To reduce it, it is enough to simply limit yourself in the consumption of fatty foods. By giving up lard, sausages, butter and replacing these products with fish and light imported margarines, you can avoid serious health problems.
The best prevention is lifestyle
At the moment, mortality from cardiovascular diseases in Russia is 56%. This indicator in Europe is on average 3.5 times lower for men and 1.5 times lower for women.
According to doctors, lifestyle plays a decisive role in the development of cardiovascular diseases. Improper diet, smoking, low physical activity and constant stress have a destructive effect on the body. It seems that everyone has heard about it, but few people actually attach importance to it.
Many people perceive cardiovascular disease simply as a fateful coincidence. “What did he die of?” – “A heart”.
Allegedly nothing could be done, and the evil fate eventually overtook him. And it never occurs to anyone that even heart disease could be dealt with.
It is in our power to try to prevent it even before the first symptoms appear. Of course, there are factors that are difficult to deal with: genetic predisposition, gender, age. And yet, even if you are an elderly man and your father had a bad heart, you can achieve tremendous health benefits through prevention.
“Three pillars” on which the health of the human cardiovascular system is based:
proper nutrition,
physical activity and the
absence of bad habits, that is, quitting smoking and moderate alcohol consumption.
These principles form the concept of “healthy lifestyle”.
Eating healthily is cheaper than being treated
The most affordable thing is to pay attention to your daily diet. What we eat now is radically different from what our ancestors ate. Our diets contain too much saturated fat, salt, sugar and too little coarse fiber found in fruits and vegetables. This explains the sad statistics of mortality from cardiovascular diseases.
Of course, diet isn’t the only way to control blood cholesterol levels.
There are many drugs that lower cholesterol levels. They are called statins , and in the process of action they simply do not allow cholesterol to be produced in the body.
But these drugs are not cheap: one package, which is enough for a month, costs 600-1500 rubles. In addition, having already started taking them, the patient “gets addicted” to these drugs, and he has to use them for the rest of his life.
And this despite the fact that there is an extremely cheap tool for lowering blood cholesterol levels – diet. It has been proven that with proper nutrition, you can reduce blood cholesterol levels by 10-20%.
Everything useful remained in milk
Many are sure that butter with potatoes and vodka is the healthiest food. Say, traditionally a Russian peasant was proud of his health and was always a hundred points ahead of Western European aesthetic ” weaklings”. Advertising, thanks to which a wonderful image was fixed for butter, rests on tradition. The associations that butter arouses among consumers are more than promising: freshness, health, great taste, environmental friendliness.
Most of our compatriots consider margarine to be a cheap and low-quality substitute for butter. However, the traditional concept of healthy food,
as practice shows, has nothing to do with reality.
It is believed that butter is a supernatural product that comes to the table directly from the cow. In doing so, the benefits of milk are automatically transferred to butter.
The importance of dairy products in nutrition lies in the biological qualities of milk protein, that is, in the optimal combination of amino acids that make up its composition. In the treatment of milk fat it is reduced, whereby it turns creamy maslo.Po composition it is 80% animal fat high in saturated fatty acids and cholesterol. Thus, everything useful remains in milk, and not in butter.
Quality margarine is healthier than butter
Margarine at all times in Russia was available because it was cheaper than butter. For many years, margarine in our country was produced by hydrogenation, when hydrogen was passed through vegetable oils at high temperatures. With this technology, some fatty acid molecules simply break down, becoming trans isomers – that is, harmful substances that contribute to the formation of cholesterol.
Many domestic factories still use outdated technologies in the production of margarine.
New technologies are now so advanced that they make it possible to make any food as useful as possible. This makes it possible for doctors (especially in the presence of risk factors) to recommend replacing butter with light and healthy margarines. Modern margarines are made by mixing liquid and solid vegetable oils. At the same time, their biological value for the health of the cardiovascular system is preserved.
For example , Unilever , whose margarines are consumed throughout Europe, uses the latest technological developments. In Russia, it produces margarines Rama Vitality and Rama Olivio. However, European quality and health standards are in little demand in Russia.
Persecuted by the Soviet image of “unnaturalness”, these useful products hardly find their consumer. After all, for Russians, the phrase ‘healthy margarine’ sounds almost absurd.
Apparently, this is why butter is still one of the most common products on our table. To this day, butter is added to porridge, potatoes, soup, smeared on bread, fried on it and stewed. But, apparently, this is a dead-end option for a country with atherosclerosis.