Healthy Heart by Eating Tomatoes, Carrots and Sweet Potatoes

Heart disease is one of the most non spread diseases that cause death. Everyone is at risk for this disease, especially people with poor lifestyle. But you can protect your heart just by eating tomatoes, carrots, and sweet potatoes.

Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland conducted a study involving 1031 people aged 46 to 65 years. The researchers took blood samples of participants and measure levels of their lycopene, alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, retinol and alpha-tocopherol.

After 11.5 years, researchers found that from 1,031 people, 194 had a heart attack. People who have cardiovascular disorders generally have low levels quantity of lycopene and beta-carotene in their blood.

So the researchers suggest to increase the intake of these nutrients to avoid heart disease. Lycopene and beta-carotene can be obtained from supplements or foods that naturally rich with these nutrients.

Here are 3 foods that contain lots of nutrients to protect against cardiovascular disease :

1. Tomatoes
Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, besides being able to prevent heart disease, Tomatoes is also considered to be able to prevent prostate cancer.

2. Carrots
Carrots contain beta-carotene and alpha-carotene. A study conducted in the Netherlands for 10 years to see how the effect of carrot consumption on cardiovascular disease. The study concluded that the yellow and orange foods, especially carrots can protect against heart disease.

Carrots can be enjoyed in many ways such as making it as part of a salad or juice to get the benefits of heart-healthy protection.

3. Sweet potato
Sweet potato is one of the foods that are less popular and often ignored. Sweet potatoes contain beta carotene which has quite high and can be enjoyed with a variety of variations.