A Healthy Diet Means a Healthy Heart
The most important way you can take care of your health is to eat right. 
No matter how much you exercise or meditate, eating processed foods with little to no nutrients is far more dangerous than you might realize. Our body converts what we eat into energy and nutrients, absorbing it into the blood stream and carrying it throughout the body. However, whatever may be left over doesn’t only get stored into tissue as fat, it resides all over the body in places you wouldn’t even imagine.
The heart functions almost like a muscle being one of the strongest human organs. Your heartbeat is actually the movement of your heart pumping blood throughout your body and circulating it back to the heart through the arteries. As it travels it carries oxygen, nutrients, and energy, to distribute to various places in the body to keep you strong and healthy. Whatever you eat gets absorbed through the blood stream, and so whatever unhealthy foods you may be eating, travels through the body and to the heart just like anything else.
Saturated Fats
Foods high in saturated fats can have a huge negative impact on your cardiovascular health. Saturated fats are not processed by the body and can build up in your arteries. While the heart works hard to pump blood through the arteries, the build of fats makes it difficult for the blood to travel through the thin fragile tubes. The fats reside in the walls of the arteries, making the passage for blood too narrow. The heart needs to pump harder and harder until eventually… it may give out. This is a called a heart attack. It can happen to anyone at any age, especially if you practice a poor diet. The worse you eat, the more vulnerable you are to heart disease.
Processed Foods
But fats aren’t the only problem. Processed foods contain preservatives and chemicals meant to prolong the life of food and make it taste better. These ingredients can trigger various illnesses after being absorbed into the body. Sodium for example, can be dangerous if you’re ingesting foods with high sodium content. We read sodium on the back of packets and forget that it isn’t just salt. It is a chemical compound that can cause hypertension (high blood pressure), which can easily result in stroke or a heart attack. Note that salt has no nutritious value, no vitamins, and can even dehydrate you if ingested in large amounts. Unfortunately, it’s in almost everything you’ll find at the grocery store, so be sure to read what you’re buying before you eat it.
One of the easiest ways to better your diet is to be sure to cook at home and use fresh ingredients so that you can control what’s going into the food you’re eating. Prevention is the best form of correction, and so the most effective way to avoid heart disease is to maintain a healthy diet.