9 Superfoods for Your Heart

The single most important step you can take for heart health starts with what you put on your plate

Eat to Your Heart’s Content

With heart disease the number one killer of both men and women in this country, you would think a cure that could dramatically reduce these deaths would be big news. And yet the most effective remedy is so simple that most people can’t seem to believe it works. “In traditional societies, where people don’t eat processed foods, heart disease is rare,” says cardiologist Arthur Agatston, MD, author of The South Beach Wake-Up Call. “If you start with a healthy diet in childhood, heart attacks are almost completely preventable.”

But even if you’ve downed a small army’s worth of french fries, cleaning up your diet as an adult can still have a profound effect. Studies have shown that up to 70% of heart disease can be averted with the right regimen, according to Walter Willett, MD, chair of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. But is diet alone as powerful as drugs? “Oh, no, it’s much more powerful,” says Dr. Willett. “Statins, the most effective single medications for reducing heart disease, only cut risk by 25 to 30%.”

In fact, you would need a cabinet full of prescription drugs to bestow all the benefits of a serious heart-healthy meal plan. There’s nothing a drug can do that foods can’t do too—lower our blood pressure (like ACE inhibitors), slash “bad” LDL cholesterol (like statins), reduce harmful triglycerides (like fibrates), raise “good” HDL (like niacin tablets), and prevent the unwanted clotting that causes heart attacks and strokes (like aspirin).

Diet can be so effective that the British Medical Journal published a paper suggesting that doctors shelve the idea of developing a combination drug with multiple heart meds in it—the Polypill, as it’s come to be known. Instead they recommended a Polymeal—a “tastier and safer alternative” that would include wine, fish, dark chocolate, garlic, almonds, and heaping servings of fruits and vegetables. “But the longer you wait, the more likely you’ll need drugs,” warns Dr. Agatston.

In that spirit, here are nine top foods for the heart. But this list is only a beginning. A truly healthy diet features a broad range of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes—not a select few. So while you’re shopping for kale, don’t neglect Swiss chard, arugula, spinach, and romaine. An orange is great, but so are strawberries, apples, bananas, and kiwifruit. Hippocrates understood the concept more than 2,000 years ago: “Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.”

28 Days to a Healthier Heart

Lower heart disease risk by 92% with a simple change each day

Heart Health Day 17: Spice Up Your Workout

The best exercise is one that you’ll continue to do. So every day, in addition to your regular workout, try something new just for fun — hitting a tennis ball against the house, shooting hoops with your kids, or dancing around your bedroom after work. If you find something that you like, incorporate it into your daily workout.

Research shows that people who are active in little ways the entire day burn more calories and are generally healthier than those who exercise for 30 to 60 minutes and then sit at a computer, says cardiologist and Prevention advisor Arthur Agatston, MD.

7 Heart Tests That Could Save Your Life

Think a stress test and a simple blood workup are all you need to assess your heart attack risk? Wrong.

Will Your Insurance Pay?

Compared with the $760,000 it costs to treat a single heart attack patient, these tests are cheap–but some insurers won’t pay for them. “The system rewards doctors who do bypasses but doesn’t pay for prevention,” says Arthur Agatston, MD. Many companies are coming around: Most will pay for the stress EKG, blood glucose, and advanced cholesterol tests. Some will cover the gene tests and CIMT. Cardiac calcium scoring usually isn’t covered. Call your carrier beforehand to find out what it will pay for and what your co-payment will be.

Prevention Pioneer: Arthur Agatston, MD

A preventive cardiologist and Prevention advisory board member, Dr. Agatston passionately believes that the right combination of diet, exercise, medication, and advanced tests can wipe out heart disease–and he’s proving it: Of the 2,500 patients he sees in his Miami clinic each year, only one or two have heart attacks.

“One of the best-kept secrets in cardiology,” he says, “is that doctors using cutting-edge prevention have stopped seeing heart attacks in their patients.”

It was Dr. Agatston and Warren Janowitz, MD, who developed the first CT scan heart screening–the cardiac calcium scoring test–in the 1980s. “At first, it was a constant battle to educate physicians that the standard of care needed to change,” Dr. Agatston says. But now, because of his work, patients everywhere can get this test.

Not content to stop there, he continues to develop treatments to prevent heart attacks. “This disease,” he repeats emphatically, “does not need to exist.”

7 Heart Tests That Could Save Your Life

Think a stress test and a simple blood workup are all you need to assess your heart attack risk? Wrong.

Your physician has you come in to his office and run on a treadmill while you’re hooked up to an EKG. For the next 8 to 12 minutes, he’ll evaluate your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure  as the intensity of the workout increases. When the stress test is over, he’ll tell you whether you have coronary artery disease.

Here’s news that might make your heart skip a beat: For women, there’s a 35% chance the test results will be wrong.

Most often, the test reveals false positives, meaning healthy women are told they have heart disease. Less frequently but obviously far more dangerous is when the test fails to detect clogged arteries that could, in fact, cause a heart attack. Fewer men are misdiagnosed.

Possible reason for the gender gap: Phases of the menstrual cycle and birth control pills have been shown to throw off results, indicating that estrogen’s effects on heart cells might be a factor.

For decades, doctors had nothing more sophisticated than a stress test to offer. Not anymore. Cardiologists now use advanced imaging and blood tests that give a much more accurate assessment of heart attack risk. “These tests are the best ways to tell who is in danger, because they can catch cardiovascular disease 20 to 30 years before it gets severe enough to cause a heart attack or stroke,” says Arthur Agatston, MD, an early champion of many of them.

Better detection is urgently needed: More than 1 million Americans have heart attacks every year, and almost half die. Men have more than women do, but the gap is closing. From 1988 to 2004, attacks among women ages 35 to 54 spiked 42%.

These tests are available at most major medical centers and hospitals. If your doctor doesn’t request them for you, demand the ones that are recommended for women in your age group and risk category.